“Oh dear” I sighed as my eyes flicked over him. Sipping his water, dressed in a muddied tired suit.

A short small man, hair thin tho’ shaved. He came from up north, a year ago he’d discovered Exmouth by mistake and returned this year fully intent on his holiday being a happy time. I’m the Town Crier of Exmouth, that means I’ll talk to anybody nay everybody, so a few sentences into our conversation found us with a cappuccino each in warm air in Exmouth’s town centre, Strand Square.

Though I’m known as a loud mouth, I’m more often than not a listener. Slowly fewer and fewer words came from my mouth and more and more came from my ‘friend’, in fact two whole hours later the torrent of his words had snaked like an unruly fire hose across subjects, objects and any other fitting grammatical term. I was exhausted, the small stream of passers-by who’d slowed to listen to this filibustering tour de force had peeled away for with nary a single pause my ‘friend’ had simply not stopped talking!

The usual nonverbal cues of attention, head nod and smile had long gone, my bottom was telling me to get a cushion and the small spill of coffee that once threatened to run over our table edge had dried up! His coffee was barely touched, his voice still delivering phrases and sentences with modulation and expression. He asked questions of me, of others of himself, always replying before mouths were opened. I began to see a pattern perhaps even a logic as I likened his flow to waters from wide deep and slow to fast, narrow then to crashing over rocks and boulders as his peaks exploded.

This man was an artist, no dauber or pointillist painter but of colour and emotion and… he’d stopped! My face smiled broadly and I said, “You’re an amazing man, I’ve never met someone with your ability to engage!”. I bowed, bumped fists and left.

A Town Crier meets all sorts and life’s journey and surprises unfailingly bring me a fascination and enjoyment.

Dear reader, thank you.