Went cycling for the first time in ages. Did a few rounds on the monkey bar. Didn't hang upside down though. I forgot. And it would've been rather uncomfortable if I did, what with the quarrelling couple in the pavillion nearby. Couple. I'm merely speculating here.


Pedalling the slope to Conway. A girl shouting. I thought it was a guy. I thought it was two friends quarrelling.


Cycling round the park. The girl is howling, screaming, the whole park can hear her. The guy, spectacled, calm, trying to reason. The girl is rather plump, and I caught a few snatches of ni3 bu yao4 wo3 le. You don't want me anymore.


She keeps screaming, keeps screaming. And then she runs, out of the pavillion, onto the road. She's standing there, one lone figure, at the white line that divides forward from backward. I'm standing where the monkey bar is, can't help looking at her for a moment, then avert my eyes and do my first round of the bars. She's crying all the while.


When I do an about turn on the bars, there's a car, nearly knocks her down. Then she's kneeling at the side of the road, squatting maybe, and I do another about-turn. I get off the bars. She's now in the pavillion again, crying.


Then I can't stand it anymore and I leave the park after doing two more rounds of the monkey bar.


The guy'd been strict and calm all the while. When she ran onto the road he was all, "You want to make this ugly? You want to make this ugly?"


When I left he was wiping away her tears.


So, okay.


Isn't it funny, Robyn, how we've witnessed more than one break-up at that park. There was once, at the 'upper deck', there was a guy and a girl at the most secluded chess table. It mightna have been a breakup, I dunno, but the girl was crying as she left.


And then the other time, at the pavillion, a guy and a girl. The guy walked away. The girl too, but she after a few steps she collapsed onto the lamppost and knelt down and cried and cried.


But also, sweet teenage love. A couple, dressed in their school uniforms, snogging the lights out of each other.


Parks are so unpredictable.