The most desperate jogger in the world hustles past me on the corner. She’s at least sixty, with powerful toned shoulders and legs made from precariously trembling stacks of aspic. She moves as if she has a very full bladder and somebody is constantly moving a toilet away from her. Worse, the invisible bastard in question is apparently moving it around all sides of the junction at West Broadway and Grand. So she’s scurrying around all sides of the crosswalk box, clearly in significant discomfort, arms tightly in and pumping sharply, legs threatening to shake apart or explode at any moment, shivering with squint-eyed frustration whenever the traffic flow stops her jogging around the junction. Whenever she passes me, she glares at my cigarette.

Two pasty guys with about five years on me walk up the street, laughing and slapping each other on the back, just enthralled with each others’ repartee on the subjects of money and women they could have fucked. They pitch up at the restaurant behind me. The taller one sticks out his hand to the young white doorman and yells, “Hi! Are you a patriot?”

Time to move on.