In my search for birthday gifts, I'd managed to wander to the edge of town. All the way back up towards the bed and breakfast in fact. The kind of thing someone who didn't know his way around might do. Albeit that and feel vague embarrassment for having to turn on my heel for no apparent reason when I got to the end of the road. There weren't any suitable shops up here anyway.
I'd found myself against the flow of shoppers on the way back, and had ended up walking down the middle of the pedestrianised street. This was when I'd seen her. A distraction just a little too long to allow my evasive manoeuvre of looking at the floor to work.
"I can see you looking at the floor"
I wasn't even looking when she spoke. Staring at permeable pavement. The clipboard and the bib she was wearing not even visible.
You see, this was where the usual avoidance tactics fell down. That on occasion you'd be flummoxed by something and have little choice but to hand over your details. Though I could still count the number of times when this had happened. The Afro woman with the French accent that had stunned my brain into utter inactivity. That and marching into the bank to cancel a direct debit because I'd only spoken to another young lady because I'd also hoped to get her details.
She had blue eyes. Her face was edged with long black hair, though her skin was fair and slightly freckled. I'd looked for the name badge, but none were visible. Just a lot of glass beads. There was a grounded look about her, a down to earth air. The kind of thing that that bohemian hippies and charity collectors seem to have in abundance.
I don't think she was having much success. The cities were hardest for this she'd said, because people just walked past you. Were there the same problems here, in this tiny place? Somehow only acquiring city status on the back of a cathedral. She'd gone from place to place doing this, and never had much of an idea where she would be minibussed to next.
Nevertheless, I'd been blunt. I wasn't going to give away any money. Though she didn't have to convince me to get my details.
When my location was mentioned, she'd announced that she was from Northampton. Northampton with the Express Lifts tower that you can see for miles. I'd done jobs there. So I'd asked her whereabouts. Not Northampton, but the nearby cess pool of Corby. I'd done jobs there too, and she hardly seemed like the kind of person who could spring forth from that place.
She loved my accent or so she'd said, a statement that seemed equally implausible to me as where she hailed from.
Did I want to send my details forth as part of a petition against twiddling your political thumbs for global warming? Possibly, but I'm still sceptical that anything will happen. Whatever the politicians say, their only true care is their political career.
Of course, I'm meant to be clued in. If only I'd spent even more time reading those textbooks. Ask me about climate change and I might have something to say. All the things that climate change can throw in your direction. That we might have been better off dealing with this fifty years ago. That it might in fact be too late to do much to stop climate change. On the plus side, we might be doing ourselves a favour.
I don't think she knew about Milankovich. The other side of the coin. The very prospect that this warming might be counteracting the potential for another one of those annoying ice ages. Her face had been lit up with some of the topics, she'd been happily smiling and nodding at what I'd been saying.
Those bits about Earth and it's wonky orbit seemed to make her shrink away. Had I just dismantled an illusion? Was the entire prospect of global warming now not so certain as it had been when she'd signed up. Possibly not the right time to ask for someones number.
Just as I was about to go, she announced that "She'd almost forgot". Pulling a bookmark from a blue canvas bag and handing it to me. I could see her name badge now. So I said goodbye to Kayleigh from Corby.
I would be lying if I said that there wasn't an inkling of guilt in all this. So when Oxfam phone me to ask for my money, I'm going to tell them everything except my bank details.
