FAIR EXCHANGE

The writer came to my flat. We stood on the balcony. He smoked a cigarette.
‘Wow,’ he said, ‘this is incredible. I’ve never seen Bristol like this. Everything looks different from up here, what an amazing view.’
‘It is isn’t it,’ I said and pointed. ‘That’s the back of Cromwell Road, you wouldn’t think it’d be there.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘you get the sweep of Gloucester Road,’ he said, ‘how it curves,’ he said. ‘And there’s Stokes Croft and Rhadika,’ he said, ‘I like that.’
We stood on the balcony.
After a short while I said, ‘What is it you want?’
He told me what he’d done the last few years, a potted history, how it led to what he was doing and what he planned the next few years.
As I watched and listened, ‘This is a performance,’ I thought, ‘just for me, between the two of us.’


CREEPY

‘The usual?’ she said when I arrived at the counter.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
Sit down. Take out notebook. Start writing.
Outside the Arts House I’d taken a leaflet said, ‘DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES,’ from a young man walked in after she’d brought me my coffee and had a brief chat about the night before.
The young man walked up to the counter, ‘You have expensive cakes here,’ he said. ‘Have I got enough for a cake and coffee?’
Stop writing. Get up. Walk to counter.
‘I’ll buy you a cake,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen you outside talking to people, giving out leaflets.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Which one do you want?’
‘What have you got?’
‘We have these just in,’ she said, the woman serving, bringing form under the counter into view a clingfilm covered sponge cake.
‘I’ll have a piece of that,’ he said.
‘How much is it?’ I said.
‘Two pounds,’ she said.
Pay her. Walk back to table. Sit down.
Later, ‘That was nice of you,’ she said, ‘buying him the cake.’
‘Felt a bit creepy,’ I said.