THE LIGHTS OF BOHEMIA

On my way to the council yesterday I made a note of what was in front of me and how after time you get used to things, things that become part of your everyday life like the stuff you left back 'there' wherever you came from. I become part of the street as I stop and watch it go by.Whether it is the little kids shouting and whistling up at the parrot on the balcony whistling down to them, or the beggars and gyspies who line what can't be called a pavement as it's too narrow. The elderly couple who half carry their mentally disabled son up this 'pavement' as his wheelchair doesn't go on it. The knife sharpener man and his flute and bicycle. The 'artists' and 'poets' and other rogues already in the bars. The glimpse of the ex-mayor in a stylish new cafe, the passing hearse, the storks throwing their heads back and clashing their beaks while standing on one leg on the roof of the cathedral, the incessant ringing of church bells, H shouting out the window, 'no one's coming!'. The blind selling the ONCE tickets. It all takes on an air of 'Luces de Bohemia' but becomes 'normal' as 'normal' as the suet puddings and drizzle you left behind.