Jung

In my favourite cafe in Bermondsey sitting diagonally opposite a student with thick-rimmed black glasses and a pony-tail annotating a text.  Posters of Phillip Schofield and Barry Manilow on the wall.  For an hour we pursue our separate tasks.  She puts away her papers and begins to roll a cigarette from a packet of Drum tobacco on the table.  I decide she appears approachable and she responds with reassuring interest to my question.  My heart sinks when she explains that they don't really have middle names in Korea but she resourcefully provides me with the second half of her first name.  I ask if it is passed down through families.  She says she shares it with her sister but no one else.  She spells it for me and then offers to write it for me in Korean.  It looks like an upside-down 'Y' next to a 'T' on it's side with a circle underneath.  She puts on a hoodie, picks up her bag and I say thank you.  She says it was her pleasure.

(I caught the hat of a wandering parking inspector today.  It had blown off in a gust of wind.  He was grateful for it's return.  We shared a pleasantry about the weather but the opportunity to ask him his middle-name, unlike the hat, was never grasped.)