I made a very rare social outing last week to meet a friend.  It wasn’t planned but I had to go to the bank and they happened to live just a minute away so we met up for a hot drink.

Staying in the cafe wasn’t an option as it was take-away only, nevertheless we headed to the hand-sanitiser that was located just inside the door of the deserted cafe.  I pressed the top down with one hand and put the other under the nozzle to catch the liquid that would surely emerge.

I’m not a complete half-wit, I know how these things should work but the sanitiser fired out at high speed and in a copious volume at an entirely unexpected trajectory that barely any of it landed on my hand. Instead most of it landed on my trousers and groin level with just a little firing off about 4 feet away behind me and narrowly missing my friend.

Typical!  The first time I go and do something civil for months like order a drink and I end up looking like I’ve missed the toilet.  My friend started laughing and stood at a very different angle to get at the sanitiser.

Not being allowed to drink inside and not particularly wanting to even if we could, we sat outside on a bench to indulge in one of our favourite things to do, people watch.   I think I’ve written about our hot drinks before but we end up chatting to everyone from millionaires to drunks and druggies.  Mafia to vicars, homeless to businessmen and everyone in between.

This time there wasn’t so much talking going on, to be fair not many people are like myself and would approach a stranger man with an apparent incontinence problem even without the virus.

We sat there for quite some time receiving stares from ne’er-do-well youths (I’ve always wanted to write ne’er-do-well so I may as well write ne’er-do-well three times in a row and get it out of my system) who seemed to think our prolonged presence there was a bit odd and thankful responses from older or sick people whose welfare we checked upon.

As happens from time to time, I got recognised by a stranger from the internet which is always a little weird but they were friendly enough.

After about half an hour the damp patch from my trousers had gone as had our drinks so we called it a day and made our escape.