Bookends

The sun is shining and London is unseasonably balmy at the moment - or at least appears so through the double bullet-proof sheath of glazing between me and the real world. View is on to road and pavement beyond and beyond that, a small wall and a narrow strip of bushes, stunted trees and pick-n-mix litter before the next Sim-City like development starts.

This summer, the wall has been home to a couple of marvellous drinkers. One spends the day leafing through his Metro and drinking Special Brew, the other sports a pair of nifty looking headphones as he sips his Spech. Of course, both are rumoured to be retired senior civil servants, or indeed serving civil servants on a very long lunch break.

Wonder where they will go in the winter? Even more worrying, the leaves on the bushed behind them are beginning to fall and the multitude of sins that they concealed are exposed! Worse still, I suspect that previously well-hidden stashes of mental-strength larger are soon to be exposed.

Of course, caring colleagues are quick to make observations about our two drinking bookends, humorously remarking 'that's you in ten years time mate' and so on. This is, of course, a nonsense, as everyone knows that I am a bitter man and so would not be seen with a can of Spech in my hand.