At the bottom of Amersham Hill is Stuart Newmans - an estate agent.  As I walk past, early in the morning, he's always there, every day.  Tall, rugged, one might say - with more than a touch of the Tommy Cooper about him. A big man, but with that curious daintyness that some tall men acquire.  Maybe he is Stuart Newmans (do independent estate agents still exist?) - certainly he's at the very least the manager, so dedicated does he seem to be to his business.  As I pass, he's either working at his computer, arranging the window displays, tidying brochures, or any one of the myriad of other tasks involved in the running of an office (I've never seen an office junior in there).  He conveys an impression of competence, of calm efficiency (it being an estate agency, this impression may be false, of course).

But it's his face that's always caught my eye.  He has, without doubt, the saddest face I have ever seen.  He fixes his computer screen with a gaze of such despair, such desolation, that I have to look away.  It seems to me to be the face of someone whom life has repeatedly knocked, again and again; every small defeat stealing away a little of his joy, until all he has left is this simple focus on the professionalism of his job - as though that, in itself, had become an escape for him, a distraction from the horde of disappointments and sorrows that crowd outside.  There in the neat, ordered, melamine-clad whiteness of his work, surrounded by the certainties of his trade, driven by the daily routine, always immaculate, in his crisp shirt and smart-if-not-actually-fashionable tie, life retains some shape for him, some purpose, that it lacks when he closes the door behind him, late at night, and heads for home.

I extrapolate wildly of course.  He may be blissfully happy.