9
Two years before Paul’s first encounter with Philip, a man was on his way home when he slipped on a discarded banana skin; littering was almost unheard of and the banana skin would not normally have been there. The unfortunate man tried to save himself, putting out his arms to maintain his balance, but it was already too late. His legs splayed and buckled and he collapsed ungracefully to the ground with a resounding thud.
Passers-by ran to the man’s aid, and more than a couple of onlookers stifled laughs.
One of them, a man with scruffy hair and beard – probably in his early sixties – and whose clothes had seen better days, started to chuckle and then laugh out loud. He grasped a nearby post for support but slid to the ground, albeit far more gracefully than ‘banana-skin man’. His sho
