The roads are quiet at 4pm, the school pick-up traffic rush has just come to its end and the mad hurry home from work is yet to begin. A middle-aged man walks along a foot path that runs behind a series of 70s brick-walled buildings with slightly mouldy white wooden windowsills. He stops at a bus stop, a post in the ground, lights a cigarette, takes a deep inhale. He releases the smoke slowly through closed teeth and parted lips, tilting his head towards the sky only slightly, though just enough for him to notice the fine drizzle of rain that had already formed a light blanket of water droplets over his puffer jacket. He takes a step back from the curb-side, so as to huddle with the trunk of a close by tree. The difference of shelter made by its sparse winter leaves is minimal, but the man doesn’t seem to notice. He cranes his neck forward, inhales deeply through his cigarette and inspects the intricacies of the bark closely, or perhaps he follows the path of an ant, or reads a scratched-in love letter.

The rain thickens.