Coffee and Mints in the High Street

Coffee and Mints In the High Street

The last time I saw that figure
Walking along the front of the shop,
It was last Thursday afternoon.
The water drizzled so laboriously
Down the window pane,
I was unable to see clearly
The rain coat and distinctive
‘After Eight’ umbrella, swinging,
and ringing off the wet,
singing positively too close to
the oncoming pedestrians.
Now it became clearer 
the After Eight was, for me,
not quite the after dinner
Experience I had sought after.

It was time to act this fine
Early Friday evening and it was
Time to act now. It was only
Personal curiosity that took me
Outside to try to see what this
Creature was, or should I say,
Who it was. Who could represent
Themselves in this manner.
Who could show themselves
To be so timid in society
To hide themselves from me
With an After Eight umbrella.
I was determined to see the face
Of this minty shambles and 
I was determined to see how
Many peoples eyes it could
Gouge out with its brolly.

Today, a fine and sunny one,
A pleasure in afternoon coffee
And a stare at the world 
Going by me. In their
Prams and wheel chairs,
The sticks and the trainers,
The Hush Puppies and the 
Clarkes, the sneakers, the runners
The straight and the funky.
Fair play to the downright kinky
Footwear and the odours
People share when walking
Past the shop and the pub
The market and the 
Hub bub by the bus stop.
Some in triplicate, some not,
Some have real ideas and
Some are just clots, but I
Can see them all today walking
Past the tea and the coffee shop.

The coffee paid for a hop 
Skip and a jump through the door
Was the last I remember 
of the tea rooms, as I stared into
spaces and corners, around shoppers 
and the fawners, the local Mafioso,
the kids around Mc’Donalds,
the old ladies in the market
by the wool store buying lockets,
Sitting over buckets.
The fancy young trollops
At the benches, with the Kev’s and 
the Trev’s with fluffy tashes 
There are who are disturbed, 
some wholly mesmerised
old perv’s. The it or whoever
it was, it was gone in a flash, 
the precursor to a ghostly Nemesis,
Banished to the derelicts.