My girl-friend was late, so I went to the park alone. I got tired of waiting, of standing there in a bookstore reading a novel about people who make love all the time in wealthy surroundings. She was good-looking, but I was also growing older, jaded.

It was one of those typical summer afternoons that we do not get in San Francisco until the autumn. The park was as usual: Children were playing these-are-the-days-of-my-youth, and old people were sunning now what the grave would darken soon enough and the beatniks were lying here and there like stale rugs on the grass, waiting for the great hip rug merchant to come along.

I walked all around the park before I sat down: a long slow circle gathered gently to its end. Then I sat down but before I could examine the territory of where I was at, an old man asked me what time it was.

‘A quarter of three,’ I said, though I did not know what time it was. I just wanted to be helpful.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and flashed an antique smile of relief.

A quarter of three was the correct time for that old man for that was the time he wanted, the time that pleased him the most. I felt pretty good.

I sat there for a few moments and saw nothing else to remember and nothing to forget. I got up and went away, leaving a happy old man behind.

The Boy Scouts of America taught me all I know, and I had done my good deed for the day, and all I needed now so that I could dwell in perfection would be to find an enfeebled fire engine and help it across the street.

‘Thank you, son,’ with its arthritic red paint smelling of old age, and its ladder covered with white hair, and a slight cataract over its siren.

There were children playing a game with bubbles at the place I had chosen to leave the park. They had a jar of magic bubble stuff and little rods with metal rings to cast the bubbles away with, to join them with the air.

Instead of leaving the park, I stood and watched the bubbles leave the park. They had a very high mortality pulse. I saw them again and again suddenly die above the sidewalk and the street: their rainbow profiles ceasing to exist.

I wondered what was happening and then looked closer to see that they were colliding with insects in the air. What a lovely idea! and then one of the bubbles was hit by the Number 30 Stockton bus.

WHAM! like the collision between an inspired trumpet and a great concerto, and showed all those other bubbles how to go out in the grand style.

Holiday in Germany