The Barber and the Tramp

After awaiting more kind words from the war zone, something I suspect I will have to cease talking about shortly, I left the artist by the wall in the living room working on her latest piece. I then walked with a kind of studious but uncomfortable gait under what I call the city's biggest sky - it is across a vast and urban stretch of grass pocked only with crows and history - before dipping through the shops and houses by the station and having a haircut. Only the first woman who began cutting my hair cut her finger so badly she couldn't continue and another woman eventually had to take over. Beforehand, blood kept pouring from this poor woman's index finger, and as I was the only person in the shop with her at the time, I felt especially responsible. With one of those ridiculous hairdresser's sheets still across me, I quickly turned on the tap and asked the poor woman - by now threatening to faint - to sit down and place her finger under the tap, which I now had running with lots of cold water. As she sat there as pale as a ghost, diluted blood spun its bright red and irritably cheerful way down the plughole. I gave her lots of paper toweling to shore up the blood. But when her colleague eventually arrived back - from the bank apparently - there wasn't a great deal of love lost, I noticed, and even less sympathy. I did what I could to patch up the enmity, as well as the wound, and proceeded to have my hair, as well as my faith, 'repaired'. An auspicious start to the day, I thought. It didn't end there, either. I caught a train into the centre. As it drawled into its final destination, I saw a woman at the end of the platform. She was standing there perfectly still with a large hand-painted sign emblazoned in red with the word 'FORGIVE' . I disembarked, baffled and bemused, and walked silently through the crowds. I was almost ready for anything now. As it happened, there was a film premier being set up and large banners with the faces of the stars staring down. Now, it just so happened that I knew one of the people in the film before they were famous and I think I half-expected to bump into them, given the sort of strange day I was having. Added to which was the fact the film was set many years ago in the war zone when indeed I was briefly there, too. Just as I was looking up at this person's giant reproduced face, I slammed into someone by mistake. It was like a thump. It couldn't be, could it? No. Instead of it being one of the biggest movie stars of recent times, it was in fact a friendly-faced tramp in a worn and patched tweed jacket with an ancient rucksack on his back. 'I do apologise,' he said, most courteously. 'No,' I said. 'I apologise.' And with that we bowed and bade each other good day. Now, I doubt they'll have had courtesy like that at the premier. Not when the paps are out and the scrums are ripe and the glitz is big and vulgar. Anyway, the artist was still working when I returned. 'How was it?' she asked, trying to get used to the haircut. 'Fine,' I said. 'I got your materials.'