Wait until next year

The first walk to the station after the clocks went back. The switch to GMT is a sleight of hand, it tricks me into thinking the winter is still a way off, that the nights aren’t yet drawing in. Everything is much brighter and clearer at this time than it was last week. The morning has the feel of late summer, or at least early autumn, but it won’t be long until it feels like I’m leaving home at night again though.

I notice a guy, mid-fifties to mid-sixties, it is hard to tell. He is dressed smartly, but isn’t smart yet. His suit jacket is slung over his arm. His paisley tie is tied, but is hanging loose. His collar isn’t right. He gets in the passenger side of a parked car. I assume he is on his way to work. I see the driver, smartly dressed but not yet smart too. His tie hasn’t even made it around his neck yet.

I guess they are on their way to work. Perhaps they are salesmen. Or on a field visit. I start to conjure up different scenarios for them. Then I notice what looks like their wives in the back. I don’t look too closely, but they look too glamorous dressed for work. I rethink my tale for them.

Maybe they are off to a funeral? But the paisley tie doesn’t seem right for that, nor the glamorous outfits of the maybe-wives.

Nobody gets married on a Monday, do they? That couldn’t be it.

Perhaps they are off to some annual function, a reunion, an alumni event, or some sort of industry bash. Perhaps it is on a Monday each year as you get the best rates at the restaurant, the hotels. Some people make a weekend of it prior to the event. Some people head down on the morning. Plenty of the guys are retired now, so the day doesn’t matter so much.

I have no idea where they were really going, but it is fun to make up stories about people sometimes.