At The Town Hall Fountain

I remember sitting on the low wall that hemmed in the old fountain.  I call it a fountain, but the water hadn’t moved for ages.  It was more of a large stagnant puddle with rusted up workings in the middle.  An empty Park Drive fag packet bobbed about the surface and I was watching it.  There was nothing else to do.

My Mum was in the Town Hall, queueing to pay the rent on our council flat.  It was a warm day anyway, but inside the badly designed extension it was sweltering.  People in the shuffling lines fanned themselves with their rent books and final reminders.  I was at that age where patience has yet to be appreciated and this was an age of fewer fears so I had gone outside to wait.  The sun glinted off the stagnant water making it look a vaguely pleasurable place to be.  I watched the bobbing fag packet and tried to resist putting my hand in the water.

The sound of shouting made me look.  A man and a woman were striding down the walkway, arguing.  They didn’t belong round here.  Local people did not argue so publicly, so passionately.  People that I knew simply grumbled and exchanged looks from under heavy brows.  But these two – they yelled, they waved arms, jabbed fingers.  She threw a carrier bag of something at him. This was the best entertainment ever.  Their accents reminded me of something you’d hear on the BBC telly.  As the man drew closer I realised why I thought this.  He was the man off the telly.  The man off Play School, the programme I watched when I got in from school.  He was oblivious to me as he passed close by, still yelling.  Mum came down the steps, putting her rent book in her handbag then holding out her hand for me to take. 

“Ooh, that’s him!”  She said “I wonder what he’s doing round here?”

“Having an argument” I observed.

“These telly types…” she tutted.

We walked on, passing the theatre where his face beamed out from a poster.  That explained it.