Beautiful travelling star

On Sunday morning the coffee shops closer to home are all shut. Walking across the part of the Dip that used to be a plague pit (the movers and shakers of Streatham want to rebrand it as the 'village green') I pass two men, high cheeked and distinctly Somali-looking, chatting by the strange henge of angular marble chairs the council just beamed down there one day. The older of the two men has a walking stick, he looks ill and is too thin. The other man is fitter and younger looking. As I walk past them I hear the younger man say to the older "when I first saw you I thought 'what an attractive man'. I thought you looked like an American railroad hobo. I called you 'my beautiful travelling star' ". He's holding a metallic blue iPod shuffle and gesticulating with it delicately as he speaks. I shouldn't be listening-in but the conversation is uplifting, however there's a limit to how slowly I can walk past without drawing attention to myself, so I move on. Once round the corner, opposite the old fire station that's now a mosque, I see there's a cafe open. Entering it is like walking into a Swiss mountain hut, it's wood-lined, dark and cosy. The music the owners are playing is from the 1960s and 70s - Marvin Gaye, Ottis Redding, Hot Chocolate.  Soon an ABBA track comes on. I remember how we loved ABBA as children. I remember there were things to love and live for even then. 

I order my coffee, sit down by the cafe window and start reading a new book. Soon I'm looking round for something to use as a bookmark. Beside my head there's a regiment of HP sauce bottles. I'm struck by their martial formation. On the shelf next to them I spot a pile of leaflets for a solicitor called Mr Lukobi, the leaflets advertise his expert legal services for matters relating to immigration, employment and crime - 'Not guilty or guilty'. He must have well-read customers as the leaflets are shaped like bookmarks. On the other side of Tooting Bec Gardens the huge black tower in the grounds of the mosque is silhouetted against a pale grey sky. Once it must have been used for firemen to practice running up and down, now it looks redundant and desolate. At the top of the rickety tower several huge pulleys wobble in the breeze like hangmen's nooses. I don't know why or how but I write this all down and send it to myself via email because it all seems significant, like there's a cryptic lesson embedded in each and every aspect of the morning.