The bass casts sparks from the band of drummers a metre or so away through the rubber soles of my feet, sending their shooting stars of vibration right up to my stomach. It’s cold and it’s semi-wet, yesterday’s rain and this morning’s foggy minus-degree mist shimmering in not-quite puddles on the paving slabs of a big, unexplored city. The man on the more metallic drum with his blurred drumsticks playing a quick rat-a-tat-tat catches my eye. This is the second or third time we’ve walked past and stopped, clinging to each other like happy people on a floating raft. Kind of temporary.

He smiles a real, genuine smile, a smile which says I don’t know you but it’s cold and we’re both getting the same waft of bratwurst and gluwein. We’re making music and you’re watching us make music, I am happy, you look happy, the guy whose arm you have wrapped around you looks happy, it’s nearly Christmas so what the hell!

My nose runs and my feet are blistered. My cigarette blows itself out, and a small child holding a dinosaur by one harmless claw twists his little hips from side to side and blows saliva bubbles at the woman with the dreadlocks and the large barrel of a drum hanging heavily from her neck. She moves as though it’s nothing at all. Taps her feet in their solid black boots, mouths one through to eight to herself, stops the resonating skin of the drum with a flat palm between bangs. The guy in the velvety trousers smiles a secret smile to himself, which catches and soon they’re all smiling, even the one with the telling lines of a mouth pulled too frequently into a grimace.

A camera wouldn’t do this moment justice, I want a butterfly net, and I realise ‘kind of temporary’ isn’t all that bad. I think I just grew up.