“Now there’s a question…”
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“Last I’d heard he was still flogging his wares on a street somewhere.
No, not like that. ”
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“He’d taken up a spot outside one of those supermarkets where you don’t need to pay and they use your facial id to charge you, you know the ones?”
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“Yeah, those. Well, he’d taken up a spot outside of those with an old trestle table filled with homemade magazines which he’d decided to print and fold on a single piece of A3. Are A3 the big ones?”
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“I know, strange spot to pick but I suppose he didn’t really want to sell any anyway.”
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“I know… I’ve heard some stories too but most of them aren’t true… ”
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“Well… I guess I know him better than most. Or better than anyone probably, but that isn’t saying too much.”
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“No, that story is categorically false. But if you’ve heard about the catacombs in Paris – that one is true.”
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“Again, I don’t know where you’re getting that. He might have said he could have been professional but the guy “sells” A3 magazines outside of a cashless supermarket.”
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“I’m not being unfair. I just wouldn’t want to misrepresent him.”
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“They say that, yes. Equally, it could have been his fascination with the mushroom which made him hide away. The two go hand-in-hand.”
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“Society sickened him. He had too much of it, it’s not very fair to misrepresent the humble mushroom either.”
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“I also wish he hadn’t wasted his time with that. Poetry is a very particular art form but at least it’s generally brief. I actually liked his rhyming. But he spent 10 years writing that. 10 years. He knew  it was bad, to the point that he tried to make it worse but couldn’t.”
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“The very same. It’s hard to imagine that such utter rubbish could come from the same pen, let alone a man who sells fold out nudes outside Amazon.”
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“Yes, and they’re self-portraits.”
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“Clown is a strong word. But, there are some of him with a clown wig and nose.”
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“It’s hard to say. He told me it was any day where the wind was over 40 knots and the cloud cover is over 3 octas.”
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“No, that’s right. No one wants an A3 fold out naked clown in 40 knots of wind.”
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“Life will do that to a man. Or any gender really.”
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“”If I see him, I’ll tell him you were after him. And likewise if you catch him. But as we know, he can be elusive.”