People talk a little louder

It’s a beautiful mid-June day in this part of West Yorkshire. The sun is out, with just a few clouds. I don’t know the names of clouds – not many people do, so I took a photograph of one.  My affluent brother can name clouds. He had to learn all their names when he took his pilot’s license.

Been to town this morning – got back just before midday. Went on the bus – don’t drive, never learned. My partner drives, but she’s working.

The bus was already full when I got on and I had to stand up. Midweek hot weather always draws people towards the town centre – armies of grandmas with their mobiles and jackets and heavy-duty handbags.

I enjoy sunny, busy mornings in Huddersfield town centre. I like to watch the people, but the thing I like most is the women.

They come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, too.

There was an older man in a white flat cap at the cash point in front of me. He couldn’t get the machine to do what he wanted. The hat lent him a slightly dapper air, but he was too fidgety to look cool in it. In the end, he gave up jabbing at the cash machine buttons and let me come in front of him. He had a gentle smile. I’m always full of inadvertent sighs and tsk-s when I have to wait for more than a minute in a queue. I use to try hard not to sigh and tsk, but this last year or do, I’ve given up. It’s incurable.

Then a young women with long dark hair and a multicoloured top came and stood behind the old man. I saw her walking up the hill and caught her eye – big dark eyes. She was serious looking and pretty. She looked straight back at me and didn’t flinch. I sometimes stare too hard at women who look beautiful. Maybe that’s sexist. I probably give them the creeps.

The woman who served me in the post office was ugly. It wasn’t her age or mottled complexion. Looks are only a small part of beauty and sometimes they don’t matter at all. Right away, I could tell the woman was mean deep down. She had a mean-looking face, whatever her expression. I wanted two postal orders. She glanced at me, with my natty beard and tattered South American Oxfam shoulder bag, and decided I was someone she could practice her meanness on. She thought I was a nothing.

“You’ve got cash to pay for these?” I was taken aback. I was being treated like a potential thief – except… it would impossible for me to run off with the postal orders, unless she gave them to me before I’d pushed the money under the glass panel. Except she gave me the postal orders before I gave her the money. It didn’t make sense. Then I remembered — perhaps she is the counter clerk who picks arguments with customers over nothing. I’ve seen it happen a couple of times in that post office with the same counter clerk. But I wasn’t sure. I did my best to be polite.

No smile. She chatted to her colleague sat next to her behind the plate glass while she processed the postal orders, but it wasn’t pleasant conversation, even though I couldn’t hear exactly what was being said. It was spiteful. I could tell by the tone and shape of her mouth. People in England don’t complain enough. That’s why people like this act like they do — because they know they can get away with it.

I was so perturbed by the mean woman, I forget to buy any stamps. I went to a shop nearby that sells sweets and small items, and books of stamps as well. The girl serving there was almost certainly a student at the local university. She was the prettiest girl in town. She had a warmth and kindness and sweet innocence about her that made me feel better straight away. I told her about the woman in the post office. She was very understanding.

Last off, I went to the Wholefood shop. I bought a nut and mushroom pie, a chocolate soya drink in a carton and a big chunk of halva. I think the young man who served me was the son of the owner-manager. The owner-manager was about the same age as his son when he first opened the shop. That’s how many years I’ve been shopping there. I don’t  know his name, but I always say hello and goodbye. Once in a while we used to talk, until one day, I was telling him about a book on Ta’widh he might want to stock – his shop sells homeopathic remedies — and the conversation started to knot up. I don’t know why. Sometimes, conversations go wrong between distant acquiantances — not badly, but just enough to close the crack in the door. We smile at each other, but don’t chat much any more.

It was always hard work talking anyway. The shop used to have a tense atmosphere when you walked in. My partner noticed it, too. Everyone who worked there always spoke very quietly, like they were either frightened of something or feeling very guilty. I use to walk out and nip my buttocks together as a joke, thinking about Seymour Skinner from the Simpsons: “the broomstick up his ars has a broomstick up its ars” as one of his faculty put it. The shop feels lighter these days when I go in.

People talk a little louder.