Patchouli and Peaches

When I was seventeen, maybe just turned eighteen, I was kicking my heels, having dropped out of sixth form and not having told my parents I was no longer in school, I used to do a lot of random walks: many of them along the towpaths of the myriad lengths of canal that run through and around Birmingham and beyond - sometimes eight or ten miles taken at a leisurely and contemplative pace, going nowhere in particular, returning whenever.

Most of these rambles started from the City Centre, where I also spent a considerable part of my time. It's strange to think now that what I eventually sought and succeeded to escape - the City - was once my territory: my favoured stamping ground. I have to admit that I loved city life then, the bustle and the crowding: it's giving of personal anonymity, allowing one to blend into the background and observe, without being observed [fat chance anywhere, these days].

I used to frequent the museums, libraries and art galleries of the City regularly, often hanging about for hours, visiting favoured exhibits and generally people-watching. A good place for the latter were the cafés and coffee bars: the Birmingham Museum and Art Galleries old 1950s espresso bar being one of my favourites. But one particular coffee bar I used to love to hang out in at that time was in a kind of hippie bazaar known as The Oasis - a large building that once held some corporate enterprise or other, turned over into a kind of metropolitan souk, with loads of small traders in booths throughout.

In the very heart of this patchouli-scented warren was a small coffee bar, where I would spend hours reading and tending cups of coffee whilst observing the comings and goings: like I said, just people-watching. One day, I was sat staring into space in the way that adolescents do so well, when a girl at an adjacent table started up a conversation. I guess she was two or three years older than me, maybe twenty or so, but we got on fine and talked for maybe an hour, at which point she said she needed to get her bus from Digbeth back home. As I had nothing else to do and enjoyed her company, I offered to walk over to the bus station with her.

On the way there you generally pass through (at least in those days) Digbeth Market, where she stopped at a fruit stall and bought a couple of peaches. Fetching up at the stand at the bus station, I was kind of hoping we might make a future date, but she just kissed me and said "Eat your peach...", smiled and got on the bus. Wonderful.