The View From Parson Street Nose

There seems to be a new way of walking: you point yourself in one direction and look in another. Three times in Bedminster now I have fallen foul of this ridiculous practice.

The first time it caught me quite unawares, I had just exited the Tesco on West Street when I spotted a chap with wildly curling hair heading my way. Due to the unfettered springiness of his locks I failed to notice he was looking over his shoulder.

By then it was too late, he crashed into me with force and I was nearly asphyxiated by the clouds of Lynx body spray or whatever powerful brand of pheromones he’d doused himself with that morning.  

"Sorry, Love, didn't see you there," he mumbled. It was on the tip of my tongue to respond with: “Of course you didn't see me, you frizzy twit, you were looking in the opposite direction,” but I bit the words back and gave him a lipstick grinding smile in response.

Now on my guard I strode on my merry way heading for morning coffee on North Street.

This time the swiveller was a young woman who seemed to be extremely interested in her own shoulder as she beetled rapidly right into my path.

"Look where you're going," I called out in warning, but my words couldn’t make it through the pounding of her iPod and we collided like trawlers in the fog.

Being, as I am, quite generously proportioned, the poor girl bounced off me like a toddler on a trampoline. I did feel quite sorry for her as I watched her reeling outside the junk shop.

The final swiveller of the day I encountered much later in the park while I was walking my little Pickle.

A young chap, gabbling away into his mobile, he was striding out across the grass, head turned to watch his Golden Retriever as it bounded towards a welcoming mongrel wantonly waving her rear.

I do still feel guilty for allowing it to happen, but I console myself that he was speeding along so quickly I doubt he would have heard me before he tripped over Pickle's lead and sprawled headlong into the grass, nose-first into a patch of, what I hoped, was mud the way that he did.