The sun is shining all over the canal and the pavement and the bird poo on the pavement. Apart from the mild discomfort of wearing a duffel coat, I am happy. So, I think, looking at all the rolled-up shirt sleeves around me, is everyone else.
Just as my duffel coat-related discomfort progresses from mild to moderate, I spot you: you are bending over and waggling your finger at your sausage dog.
‘Stop rolling in that muck!’ you are shouting.
But the dog, being a dog, is still rolling in the ‘muck’ – which is actually a remarkably beer can-free strip of grass.
‘It’s not funny!’ you say.
You are not talking to me but I cannot help laughing: really, why get a dog whose legs have been bred into near non-existence, a dog whose namesake is one of the more ridiculous foodstuffs, if you did not want to laugh?
But who am I to tell you what to do? This moment is all I know of your life – I do not know, for example, whether you wanted to get out of bed this morning, whether there is anyone you look forward to seeing when you get home – and it’s almost over.
Maybe you can tell me why, days later, as I’m sipping coffee on a stone boulder which is sun-covered on an afternoon that for once happens to fall on a weekend, as I watch a man take off all his clothes and jump right into that mucky water, as I laugh and sigh and shake my head along with all the other happy sunny people around me, part of me is thinking of you and your dog that you did not want to laugh.
Leeds in the Loop 