Eavesdropping

[desperance]

September is the best month. Thunderstorms last night, hot sun this afternoon. I just wanted to be out there with a book and a bottle of wine, but I was being good, I had shopped (mutton curry tonight) and I was coming home. And this student-girl ran past me, from the phonebooth to the car; and her boyfriend (I am interpreting relationships here, you understand, with shocking casualness, and I don't care) leaned out of the booth and yelled "Is it a 205 diesel?" while their two friends sat on a wall and laughed at them, and I laughed too, and nobody cared, because really that is the sort of thing that the car's driver ought to know, but it was sunny and September so who cared?

It was only as I walked on down the street that the truly strange element in the story struck me: four students, and not a mobile phone among them?