Observed from an Exeter bus

In the cacophony of the high street precinct, there’s a busker. But the appellation doesn’t quite fit. More like a troubadour, a wandering minstrel, shouting out songs, quite badly it seems from inside a bus, to the twang of an inaudible guitar. Notes and words are screened and distorted by the glass and metal of vehicles, the kaleidoscope movement of body-swerving passers by, few of whom give him as much as a glance. Sound waves get corrupted, diffracted, curve away.

He is dressed in quiet brown; muddy, understated. Tweed and corduroy, flat cap and curly brown hair. Behind his pitch a pony cart, jumbled with boxes and sacks, by which presumably he traveled here. Harnessed and patient, the grey dappled pony waits, blinkered, still, at ease. On the back of the cart, a scruffy lurcher rises and turns, to fall back resignedly onto a blanket of indeterminate colour and fabric.

Just as I am being pixie-led into the Wessex of Hardy or the allures of Widdecombe Fair, the troubadour whips his phone from a corduroy pocket, ditches the guitar and embarks on an animated conversation, striding up and down.

While he is thus distracted, people pause, children approach to pat the horse, photos are taken of the photogenic lurcher on the cart.

No-one places coins in the inviting guitar case.