Andy

In town I wanted to find a shop that might have some light absorbing black velvet or similar for sale. There was no need for hunting. The very shop, 'Decorative Cloth', was the second shop I walked passed, and they had precisely what I was looking for.

I chucked the material back in the car, wandered through the park towards the church, and then into Bunters snack shop. I ordered a large white bap filled with sausages and was persuaded to throw in another quid for a mug of tea. As Andy pottered with the tea bag, we got into a chat. Andy came over from India when he was three. Plainly his Dad cobbled together enough savings to buy the sarnie shop because as a kid, Andy worked there. Unsurprisingly, there was no trace of a foreign dialect in Andy's voice. Yet that a man with an indian complexion should speak like a BBC news announcer had Americans scratching their heads. Andy told me he spent some years working in California. There, he was widely referred to as 'Prince Andrew'. Others just called him weird. This was the thing about Americans, suggested Andy. They were so insular. There was more to the world than the USofA.

Andy's diction was less choice on the topic of Anglo-Pakistani groomers and gap-year jihadists.

As I returned my cup and plate to the counter I asked for the chance of a photograph. I liked Andy's straight, no-nonsense talking.

In the evening I met up with Phil. We have at last settled on a date for our overdue trip to lakeland - 8 November.