Glimpse

A glimpse, a glance, lasting a second, or less, and then they're gone, carried away by the earth rolling under the bus. We cut to the next scene, but the residual image remains, pulled off the conveyor belt and fingered by the mind, pressed and prodded and turned:

A middle aged male, in grey pinstripe suit. Hunched slightly as he sits at a bus stop, his melancholy eyes gaze down at a small leafy twig from a privet hedge that he turns in the fingers of both hands. His legs are slumped out before his rounded belly, and a tear roles down his cheek. (I'm aware I may have inadvertently added the tear in post production – I remember what I saw, not necessarily what there was.)

Later, we’re passing through a housing estate, and movement draws my eyes to a garden where a large black dog, perhaps a Labrador, is swinging two feet above the ground, fixed by his teeth to a red rubber hoop, in turn held by a stocky man pivoting on his right foot as he turns. The dog sways up and down around the circular path, legs flailing out behind, and the man catches my eye and grins. Before the dog has completed a full circle they are carried away into the distance.