Halway through reading Bleak House and feeling somewhat awash with the unending stream of odd-bod characters writ large that Dickens so enjoys creating. Comic, strange, tragic, curious all. Some a doodle and others a bombardment. How very peculiar, preposterous that he would invent them and on such a scale. And then on the way to Tesco after work last night, cycling along an unlit path in the gloom, I discerned ahead of me an odd assemblage of a person pushing a shopping trolley towards the store, shuffling along in a bobbling, pausing manner. Getting closer, even from the barest glimmer of lights t'was a small, impossibly elderly, unwell woman and an emaciated young boy walking on tip toes, who were seemingly attached by their clothes being stitched together they were so close. In the store I saw them again, in their own oblivous to all, attached to one another condition, pondering things very precisely but not really buying anything much. The boy, with ill fitting overly-large b