Out of place/out of time

I spotted the horse and cart turning into Cornmarket Street in the distance, contemplated chasing but thought I’d never catch it. I looked again, told myself not to be such a wimp and ran. Just as I caught up, this man stopped them, asked for a picture with the horse and was paying the agreed fee. The woman here is telling him to hurry up because loads of other people around are whipping out their phones and stealing her soul. Guilty, but isn’t Austin Reed just the perfect place for those proud backs?

After they’d clopped on, I got talking to their interloper, Makout. He’s from Tripoli where seven years ago, I had a peaceful holiday and three weeks ago eleven planes were seized from the international airport, apparently by Islamist rebels. We talked in the fluent English he’s learnt in the four years he’s been here about the turmoil in the Arab world, how I cannot fit my experiences there onto the current news and how he looks forward to things being as they were before.