The View from Parson Street Nose

"What're you doing? That's mine!" Outside Superdrug a couple were wresting over a Burberry scarf.

"But my neck's cold and I put all my pashminals in the charity bag," whined the woman, clinging onto the scarf for all she was worth.

"Well, thas your stupid fault then, innit?" said the man. "What the heck did you chuck 'em out for, Ruth? You know's its winter."

"Pashminals is gone out of fashion." Ruth dug her heels into a crack in the pavement trying to improve her pulling stance.

"That's your hard cheese – now give it 'ere!" He tugged the scarf out of her hands, sending her teetering into a pack of pigeons pecking at a dead pasty laying in the gutter.

The man wound the scarf back around his neck, tucking the ends into his jacket.

"There," he said, beaming at the shivering Ruth. "Snug as a bug, I am."

A blast of wind whistled down the street, sending crisp packets fluttering around them. Ruth pulled her flimsy cotton jacket tighter across her barely-restrained frontage, looking forlorn and woebegone enough to be a Dicken's doxy. I wasn't surprised to see the smugness on her partner's face drop into submission.

"Oh, for goodness sakes, all right," he said, whipping the scarf off again and throwing it at her. "You wins. I can't stand it when you does your abandoned kitten face at me."

"Ooh!"

I suddenly realised I wasn't the only one watching the floorshow. A skinny woman wrapped in a thick fleece with wolves rampaging all over it was lurking by my side.

"I must 'ave a go at pulling a face like that at 'ar old man," she said. "I could do with a new fleece – I'm into lions now."  She winked at me.

It was chocko in the Card Factory. I only popped in for an anniversary card for Mrs Bonnet and Bertie, and had completely forgotten it was St Valentine's season. Red and pink hearts beckoned to me from each and every shelf. It seemed all the other cards had been banished to the racks at the back of the store.

As I tried to squeeze through the throng, I got stuck behind a young man busily scrutinising the wording in a padded card of roughly the same size as my kitchen table.

"'Scuse me," a coquettish brunette popped up by his elbow. "I couldn't help but notice that card you've got there. Can I ask – is that for your girlfriend or someone you've just got your eye on?"

"Girl in work," came the reply. "Why? What's wrong with it?"   

I caught the flash of triumph dance in the brunette's eyes for just a second, before she began batting her eyelashes at him. "I wouldn't want a card like that. Small and pretty is what you want. Here, let me help you," she said, seizing his elbow in her tiny hand. "I'm good at choosing cards." And with that she pulled him further along the row.

I didn't reckon much for his chances against that little minx.