Sunday 17 August 2014

33) The Small Man and the Dried Biscuit

His cardboard sign in the street reads like the title of a Porno no one would really want to watch. Yet it seems perfectly clean. He is a small man with a brown beard which serves as his blanket. His wears a blue gown with golden threads. His facial features are perfectly straight. In front of him on a red and white striped podium is a McVitie’s digestive biscuit. No other information is given.

I sit on a park bench over the road from him and watch for a while. Many pedestrians wander by, some stop to observe but others rush on before he asks them for change. He does not talk. The pigeons eye up his biscuit but none have the courage to dart for it.

After about ten minutes I go over to him and place a pound coin down on the podium. I look at him, but he looks right through me. I hover my hand over the biscuit, hoping he’ll palm my hand away with lightning reflexes, but still he does not move. I pick up the biscuit. Nothing. Dangle it above my mouth. He doesn’t care. On the bottom of the biscuit there is a piece of paper cello taped. It’s a note which instructs me to turn the podium over. I do as is told of me. Underneath the podium is a full packet of digestives, minus one biscuit.


The small man picks up the packet, bows before me and wanders away. He leaves the podium, the sign and the single digestive that’s in my hand. I can only assume this is some sort of proverb. I wonder how long he’s been sat there, how long the biscuit must have been out in the open. I tip the podium upright and leave the biscuit where it had been before. The pigeons dive furiously at it.

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