Sometimes I refer to people using initials. These are usually the people I meet regularly when I’m out for a walk. If I don’t know their names, I’ll use initials which refers to something about them to help me identify them later. I’ve met people in this way and known them for years without knowing their names – sometimes there are just more important things to talk about.
Having said all that, you’ll find more references to these people in older posts than new ones. People, (myself included) are back working in offices and routines have changed again following the pandemic, so we don’t all see each other as often as we used to.
TMWDIAB
I met The Man Whose Dog Is A Bastard in 2020. For some reason, I posted this on Tumblr way before I started weeknotes:
In the park this morning a guy paused until I’d gone past before throwing a ball for his dog. I said ‘thanks’, he said ‘Ok. I’m a terrible thrower. I hit a donkey’. I said, ‘Oh! The dog looks happy though. Cute dog’. He said, ‘The dog’s a bastard.’
22 May 2020
The dog is a small wire-haired terrier: bit grumpy; bit old; doesn’t like to be touched. The man takes exceptionally good care of him, and whenever we chat, the dog will bark for the treats he knows the man keeps in his pocket. The man will feed them to him in a steady stream, in the hope he’ll shut up. He doesn’t. In the pandemic, we’d often pass each other in the fields, so we went from saying ‘Morning’ to stopping for a proper chat.
FMP
FMP is short for ‘favourite morning person’. Actually, I have a few favourite morning people, but she’s a favourite because she’s always so cheerful (could be annoying but isn’t). We met during the pandemic, when she was walking to work and I was litter picking. She said, “They should pay you for doing that”, and we’ve chatted in the park ever since. Once, she came round for a cup of tea. I do actually know her first name.
T
Here’s what I wrote about T back in 2022:
“T is the first friend I made walking through the pandemic. He’s retired and walks most mornings, sometimes with 2 friends, sometimes alone. He always talks to me, his friends never do. If you’ve pictured him, I can almost guarantee that’s not what he looks like.”
(The other) T
(The other) T is employed by the council to empty the bins in the park. He keeps me supplied with bin bags for litter picking and always rushes to take a full bag off my hands. Sometimes he plays Frank Sinatra loudly in his van and listens to it through the open window while he works. I love it. If you mention him to anyone around here, they’ll tell you how much they like him.
Walknotes 