… Disreputable and scruffy, he was the old side of middle age. His last brush was lost in history. He looked as if his last bath was long forgotten. He was an off-white sort-of-terrier beast and he was tentatively licking a newly opened aluminium container of dog food, its aluminium foil lid curled back to one side.

The dog and his vagabond owner were seated silently in the stream of pedestrian traffic in a 1.5 square metre island of calm defined by the stone Metro railing and their body space. He sat in his uniformly dark blue clothes while his dog gravely contemplated his meal and he contemplated the contents of a plastic shopping bag out of which protruded three baguettes. Having fed the dog, and now ignoring its existence, he took from the bag a rectangular can from whose base he removed a key

Avenue des Champs Elysee, Paris, Thursday 04 May 2006, 3:46:18 pm