She was tall, attractive, slim and perfectly proportioned
(in the way that conventional taste would universally recognise), with long,
shapely legs and long, honey blonde hair. She walked with the sort of elegant
ease which one might associate with someone used to walking elegantly for a
living, and at any distance beyond twenty feet it would be natural to speculate
that she might have been a thirty-something ex-, or even current, fashion
model. Today the distance between us was less than twenty feet, and when she
turned and smiled at me (heaven knows why) I could see the lines encroaching on
the space around her eyes and beginning to radiate from the corners of her
mouth and the edges of her lips. She looked nearer fifty, but still carried an
air of fading, major league chic.
And today she was not alone. Today she had a man with her.
He looked to be in his forties and projected a more vernacular impression, being
dressed in workaday clothes and possessed of the kind of body language which
one might associate with a smallhold farmer. He wore a baseball cap and ate
with his mouth open.
Between the two sat a little boy of around three. He was
active but quietly behaved, and both his looks and hair colour left little
doubt that he was the woman’s son. Whether he was their son was impossible to assess.
In short, they didn’t match. Contented they might have been
– and that was the impression I took from their general demeanour – but they
didn’t fit the conventional family picture at all. And that’s why I was greatly intrigued and wanted to
go over and ask them:
‘Excuse me, but would you mind telling me your story from
the beginning so I can write it up on my blog and satisfy my curiosity at
the same time.’
And one day, when
I’ve graduated as a fully qualified English eccentric, I just might.
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