It was mid-day when a curly-permed woman of retirement age entered the cafe and placed an order for a pot of tea. Slight in build and swamped in a knee-length, silver anorak, her features advertised her dissatisfaction with life’s turmoil.

 As I served her, she removed her coat revealing a coordinating ensemble of grey Primark separates and took a seat. She resembled an animated black and white photograph. I think she would have blended entirely into insignificance, against the tea-room’s monochromatic décor, if not for a liberal application of fuchsia lipstick which framed her yellow teeth and bled into her smoker’s pucker.

Apart from a few comments about the weather, she didn’t really strike up a conversation until I made to leave for my own lunch. It became obvious she liked to pass the time of day with anyone willing to listen and I was allocated that reluctant honour.

Ripping open three sachets of sugar and emptied them into her tea cup, she paused before she sampled the beverage. “You know hen, I didn’t ken this place existed till the day.” Her eyes peered up at me through folds of sagging skin and I watched with fascination as her garish lips appeared to move independently against the backdrop of her ashen complexion. They reminded me of Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat, without the grin.

“Really?” I tried to keep my facial expression intent and interested but she must have caught the look of puzzlement in my face.

“The café; I’ve no been in here afore,” Placing her cup on the table, the rim of the white porcelain now stained pink, her hand hovered once more over the sugar bowl. “Oh I’ve come to Stra’ven a couple of times right enough, but I huvn’y managed across the road in that big square where the bus parks. The traffic’s comin’ at you fae awe directions; I nearly kilt ma’self the last time.”

The Common Green, a large square surrounded by shops has a central parking bay with car access at a main junction and two minor roads and sits in the heart of Strathaven. Traffic normally travels at a snail’s pace. Although I tried not to judge, I wondered why she had difficulty with the simple procedure of crossing the road, knowing as I do, that the traffic circles the central parking area one way only; in the normal clockwise direction governed by the rule of driving on the left.