While I was drawing this a tanned teenage girl wearing only a Rasta hat and a bikini came toward me on a bicycle, stopped, looked down at my drawing and said, ‘Did you like, go to college to learn how to do that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking up at her.

‘My Mom went to college to learn how to do that, too,’ she said, ‘but she can’t do it as good as you,’

‘That’s nice of you to say,’ I said to the girl, ‘but you probably shouldn’t say that to your mother,’

‘No,’ said the girl after short pause, ‘I guess I probably shouldn’t.’

While I was drawing this 2 middle aged women with dark orange tans came up the street on bicycles, pulled up on either side of me, looked down and started talking at me.

‘Well, hey there,’ said the woman to my right, ‘I see you’re doing some painting?’
‘Actually,’ I said, putting a pastel back in its box and looking up at her, ‘I’m drawing,’
‘Oh, how neat,’ she shouted out.
Then the other woman started talking.

‘On Oprah yesterday there was an artist who did this like massive portrait,’ she said, letting go of her handlebars and drawing a big air square with her hands, ‘and he’s like the fastest portraitist in the world. And he was like doing this portrait in 2 minutes only using his hands, no brushes, and right alongside of him they had the fastest violinist in the world and he was playing Vivaldi, one of the seasons, I don’t know which season, but it was, really, really fast.’

Then the other woman shouted out how neat again and then, without even waiting for my response to the Oprah portrait story, they both told to me to be sure to have a great day and rode off.

While I was drawing this a series of teenagers went up and down the street on red motor scooters while a short, fat woman with hair like a Lego man shouted instructions at them- ‘A little gas, a little break, a little gas a little break a little gas, a little break,’

Then, as if I’d called out, hey who’s related to that fat motorcycle instructor, a middle aged man came over to me, pointed to the woman and said, ‘That’s my sister. She’s got a whole heap of them motor scooters so she’s teaching my kids to ride ‘em,’

Then, because I didn’t know what else to say I said – ‘I have a proper motorbike at home,’

Then the man, who was wearing shorts but no shirt, put his hands on his hips, turned his attention fully toward me and started to tell me the story of how he’d once had a motorbike.

But luckily, before he was too far in, he was distracted by his sister who had stopped screaming out motorcycle instructions and was now literally bellowing out information about their evening meal.

‘We’re going to take the scooters out onto A1A,’ she was crying out, ‘we’re gonna go order pizzas. We’re gonna head on down there now and get us some supper underway.’

While I was drawing this a fat black and white cat sat in the driveway and stared at me.

Then a man came out and started putting fishing equipment in the back of a truck parked in the driveway.

Then a woman came up on a bicycle and parked it in the driveway.

After a while the fishing equipment man and the bicycle woman came out and sat on the porch drinking what I presumed, being in America and being only 8am, was coffee.