So there was this old black fella walking along in front of me, very slowly. Very well turned out the way some old black dudes are: beige flat cap, check jacket, tan trousers with creases ironed into them. I was carrying loads of shopping and in a big rush to get home, and was getting wound up about having to walk along behind this old dude who was walking VERY slowly. There were roadworks so I couldn't pass him. But anyway. He heard me behind him eventually, and stopped and stepped aside, and looked at me, smiling and did this big sparkly-eyed good-natured belly laugh.

As I was hurrying home, I was thinking, he was totally not in a rush to get anywhere at all. And I wondered why exactly I was rushing home so vexed and wound up and hurrying. And I wondered if that dude had absolutely nothing to do, or if he just had a good perspective whereby things can happen at their own pace, everything gets done anyway, except he is a lot happier and less stressed.

And then I was thinking about absurdity. That fellow might have thought that all the rushing, frowning, brow-furrowing people rushing around the pavements are just too up tight about everything, and attach disproportionate amounts of importance to things. And then I thought, that guy had a much better grasp of absurdity than Kafka, who joined it up with hopelessness and self-loathing into a septic little bag of horror. Whereas the old man of Dalston joined absurdity with enjoyment and relaxation (in my mind at least) and seemed very happy for it.

Yeah.