Tramping Joe

I met Joe recently, sitting on a park bench munching his way through a fourth coconut slice.  Joe is one of the last of that honourable band of men we used to refer to as gentlemen of the road.

In his mid-seventies, ruddy cheeked and sporting a week’s growth of beard, he has the clearest eyes of any man I have ever seen.

He passes through our town once a year on his way through southern England from Sussex to Cornwall.  Joe likes us here in Devon, he says, because we are so friendly.  He left London some twenty years ago for what he candidly refer to as the real life; a life of no rent, council tax, electric light, gas or water bills where he is free to eat coconut slices all day.

© FCR Esgen