This friend I had — I don’t make friends easy. We met at the bus-stop I pass on the way to the gym. It took a year or so of amicable passing nods before we got to talking. And then … his thick Scottish accent … my tongue-tying social anxiety … it took a further while to piece together much of a rapport. But he was patient and, unlike so many, keen to see the best in me. Besides, we found ourselves on the firmest of common grounds. Soon our early morning chats were a routine feature of my rigid routine. I’d walk up first thing from my nice warm bed to go workout-away all the mental and physical hindrances between me and the forthcoming day. And he’d have been there some time already — the first stop of the day after quietly easing away from whichever half-sheltered corner he’d managed to stake for himself in the night. The thing with bus-stops is that "waiting" and "hanging around" are fairly indistinguishable activities — at least until the full roster of routes