A melancholic melody wafted through the shopping precinct. Mingling with the shuffling feet of shoppers whose eyes are ever on the prize, deadened to each other and the earth beneath the cement. But I heard it. A tin whistle being blown by a down and not quite out. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

But of course a few scattered coins does not salvation bring. Only a bitter hope waiting to be daily drowned.

Until a little lady with a tartan wheelie bag stopped by. Head covered, not for religious reasons but for matters more mundane, protection against a morning mist. She had the anonymous look of the elderly. Indistinguished, now, by a life's living, now slowly slipping into the uniformity of the old.

She was slightly hunched over, She shuffled over to the bearded man. He seemed to know though not consciously, or, perhaps, even intuitively. It was as though something deeper drew one to the other, aligning for a few minutes their very beings. She took a hand, fingers protruding from tatty gloves, and removed the tin whistle. She placed it gently down. She took the man's hand and placed it in her's so they were palm to palm. She placed her other hand behind him, ushering him up to his full height. He responded and wrapped his arm around her back. They stood still, together. And then moved together, imperceptibly at first and then into long forgotten steps. A waltz.