Monday, August 11, 2008

coffee no. 145

An old man sits in front of me on a tram. He reads a newspaper and eats orange tic tacs. Suddenly one can hear a loud regular tone and the man starts to squirm. With a gigantic nervousness he checks his pockets and bag, the newspaper falls on the floor, people start to stare. I am not surprised by his behaviour because the view of elderly people fumbling for their phones is quite common. They often have big, old fashioned mobiles giving an annoying and too loud beep beep beep. After some seconds on the passenger's face appears a delicate smile of relief. He takes out of his leather bag a red cheap alarm clock, turns it off and takes back into the bag. Wakey!