Chilling

Yesterday, I sat out at midday, drinking tea with Benjamin, the second Frenchman to have joined the mountainside escapade. By this point the sun had left our spot and naturally you begin to feel the temperature. I realised that on the chair I was sitting on was a shawl. So I put the shawl over my shoulders, felt a touch closer to a desired temperature and went about my tea. I also ate bread.

Twenty minutes later and in marches Joseph, my middle-aged, insane house acquaintance. "Morning," I say without looking up. I feel him approach from behind me and he grabs the shawl from off my back. He mutters something like: "No shawl. Bring rupees. Better."

And off he goes in a huff. I think he was trying to explain through his own version of insanity that I was using his shawl without permission. And maybe I should give him rupees for the prohibited use of it by a scruffy upstart with the cheek to live next to him.

Thinking about it, I should have known that it was probably his shawl and that he would not have appreciated such a painful reminder of youthful vitality wearing it.

I couldn't help it: "Prick."

He didn't hear me. Or maybe he did because that evening he spent about an hour sitting in the kitchen (not somewhere you would choose to sit, trust me) talking to himself. We were sat outside eating dinner. He was talking to himself. "Sometimes better. Sometimes not better. Knife. Gun."

He's a frightening man. He's also a chronic weed smoker. I think he thinks that weed makes him less fucking weird and terrifying. I don't think it's working.