While I was drawing this, a bedraggled young woman walked up the street in front of me, pulling a large, folded, multi-coloured beach umbrella behind her.
‘Do you want an umbrella?’ she called out to me. ‘I am selling this umbrella.’
Even though I didn’t want the beach umbrella, I asked her how much she wanted for it.
‘Ummmm . . .’ she said, stopping, frowning and thinking. ‘Only 15 dollars.’
And then, thinking she probably really needed 15 dollars, I almost opened my mouth to buy the umbrella that I didn’t want.
But I didn’t.
Instead I called out no thank you, I probably wouldn’t ever use it.
‘Everyone gives me things,’ the woman called back to me. ‘So if you think you need anything, you just let me know, okay?’
‘Okay!’ I called back to her. ‘I will!’
Today’s listening: God Is Not Great- Christopher Hitchens at Google
A Hundred Houses 