On the route I walk to work there's always the same people. The first person I see is always the guy at the little newsagency near the train station. He's usually organising the papers into his motorcycle so they can be delivered. Then there's the guy who stands at the train station smoking cigarettes. He's always about fifteen minutes early for the first train of the morning. Up on Glenferrie Road there's the guy who's bringing the papers in at another newsagents and the truck that's unloading loaves of bread for one of the fake bakeries. There's sometimes another truck right near the supermarket taking bread in through the front door. The store manager's told me in the past that he does it because the back way is too much of a mess first thing in the morning.
Lately though there's been someone else. This morning and on Friday morning last week there's been a girl jogging up and down the street. She wears jeans, sneakers and a jacket, but she's jogging anyway. The first time I saw her it was just as a figure in the distance, running towards me and I didn't know what to think. She doesn't really jog, either. Sometimes she'll run for half a block, cross the road and skip back down the footpath looking in store windows. Sometimes she'll stop completely. Other times she'll walk slowly, humming along to the mp3 player she's wearing.