our town

Absently digging into one of the sidepockets of my jacket, I cross the street and find, on recovering my senses, an old, balding man waiting for me on the opposite pavement, his face dressed with an affable smile. "Hello," he greets me, "long time no see!" I stop short, lifting my chin and turning my head slightly, to study him from beneath quizzically raised eyebrows. In the same split second, I become aware of the defensiveness of my reaction to him, drop my shoulders and kill any of the imperiousness borne in my initial expression with an utterly nonsense grin.

"Err... yes... yes, long time no see!" I offer. He asks me how I've been - fine, if busy - and carries on briefly, touching on my mother's recent problems with arthritis, before telling me how nice it was to see me. "Cheers, and take care" I return, as he wanders off. I assess his case of mistaken identity momentarily, before I continue walking. Sweet, little old men.

Straight ahead, a middle-aged woman with short hair and boyish features approaches, walking in the street alongside the pavement. She is clad in a pale, turquoise-green fleece, and has her arms wrapped tightly about herself, but as a young girl walks past, "Whee!" she cries, flinging her arms out and making as if to hug her. The girl scurries out of the way and escapes, while the old woman swans over to me, arms still held wide, causing me to step out of the way. "Damn, missed her," she grins, "and I almost had you too!" As she continues past me, she calls back, "Don't mind me, I'm only mad!"

And in a moment, I am left standing alone on the street. As I am prone to doing with or without an audience, I put on the expression of one who has been totally weirded-out by one too many light, if entertaining, encounters with the terminally demented, music from the Twilight Zone playing through my head. Is this the Cambridge that people often talk about?