For the first time in my life, I cook bacon

I've got a few days in a works canteen. I'm on my own most of the time and the shifts are up to twelve hours long. I had got to the age of fifty-seven without flipping a burger or cooking bacon.

The pricing seems to be determined by the closeness of the manager's friendships with the individuals, and several people bridled at me charging them the published prices, so I've had to draw up a long list of concessions. I was told this morning that the manager likes me, unfortunately.

In Castle Park after work, the hot sun lit a model of social inclusion so inclusive it could have been staged.

It was great to see some of the familiar denizens again: the man who looks a bit like Jamiroquai was perched on his bit of wall and got talking to the peripatetic habitué of Wethers; the man who's overdone the henna a bit and who is left alone to sleep in between intervals of talking to himself and swinging a small bottle of vodka like a pendulum.

Two Muslim women sat on a bench next to an East European couple who were parking an over-stuffed pushchair, with a baby lost somewhere amongst the Wilko bags. We just lacked the sixtysomething who rides around on an Elvised-up bike with a large speaker belting out stadium rock classics.

Someone saw me struggling to get my cider open on a wee jut of stone, and hailed me. "I'll do it with my lighter," he said, before failing to find his lighter. From another group, a lighter was thrown to him and he took my cider and popped it like champagne. A man in a tight vest swaggered past and... asked to borrow a lighter.

Someone sat down with our shapely protagonist, who said he'd just got out of prison after five years. One or the other was trying to angle it towards drugs. "No, I don't really do that any more, well only you know, occasionally," almost apologising. An irritant -- "I don't really find exams difficult. I've never had an exam in which I've got less than 80%" - buzzed off once his time was up, to fret with Excel in an office.

Once the workers bees return to prison, the atmosphere loosens a bit. There was drum and bass from one quarter, house from another, and there was something else which I couldn't identify. Unfortunately it also loosens the bladder.

Hayley and boyf turned up and started snogging on the grass, because I like being tested for jealousy on a hot afternoon, so to escape the erotic tension I went to have a piss behind the old Bank of England building and laughingly, in cahoots with them, I had to wait for two girls to finish.

Yesterday, the pubs -- outdoor areas only -- were allowed to re-open in England, and with it the chance to dive down to my socio-economic level after a year of pretending I find walking interesting, and half-heartedly trying to identify trees. The weather made it a keen pleasure, but I stayed for three pints.

Every table was taken by half eleven. Couple on the table next to me had been there since half nine. How I've missed earwigging on other people's conversation, and the peculiar pleasure of being on your own with other people.

Man on table 1 to man on table 2: "Fucking 'ell mate, been a year when we can't go out and now you're sat there with your fucking headphones on. Why you doing that?" Another man from table 1: "Cos he"s a cunt."