Parking mad

 Pepper and I love parks. She adores the interesting smells on twigs, blades of grass, tree trunks. And she loves dropping a pee every 20 paces and a humungous poo just when

a nice lady is walking by. I love it for the nut balls I get to see. One day it was a guy

practicing juggling. throwing 6 and more balls in the air and dropping most of them. Continuously.A sort of Cirque de failure and quite entertaining.

Then on another day a buff young man and his girlfriend were acting very suspicious and I thought they were here for a mid-day make-out session but on my second occasion of walking past them I saw they had tied a thick rubber rope between two trees and were practicing tight rope walking. They were more successful that the juggler but not by much. And then there was the lady with the dogcart. She had a Doberman the size of a small horse harnessed in this little trap and was teaching the dog to respond to the reins before jumping in and trotting around the parking lot. And speaking of the parking lot there is the gentleman above who either has a very heavy chair that he can’t move any further than he has or he truly prefers sitting in the lot and not the park. A bugaphobe perhaps? Grass allergies? A love of asphalt? He’s not that far removed from the great British sunbather who sits along beach promenades the world over in all kinds of weather and wears a knotted handkerchief on his head for sun protection. When I see minor eccentrics like I see in the park I get all nostalgic for when I lived in Manhattan and would walk through Central Park which was more like central casting for `unusual’ people. I recall a woman with cat on a leash standing with her upraised arm beside the tree in whose branches little kitty has climbed and was now soundly sleeping .Then there was the red faced man with the boa constrictor which looked a little too tightly wound around his neck.There was the old woman with 2 Cockatoos on her shoulder who swayed like hula dancers maintaining their balance as she shuffled from garbage can to garbage can. And then there was the man with the Shetland pony causing one guy to ask me `what kind of dog is that?’ The sights didn't always involve animals.I remember being surprised by a man high up above me in a tree playing a violin.And by an older woman walking on her hands through a busy crowd and nobody giving her a second look.Or the time I saw a character dressed as Christ carrying a prop cross and being followed by three guys dressed as roman soldiers.Again nobody even blinking except me. My new park may have a lesser league of eccentrics but without them it just wouldn’t be worth the walk. And Pepper agrees.