Humming

Mikhail Karikis told me once there was a conference on
humming at St Andrews University.
Funny, everyone seemed to be humming in Barnet today. The grey-haired lady in the PDSA shop, in her scratchy tweed skirt and maroon cardigan, was humming along accurately to a raunchy Stones track on the radio in a rich, deep contralto, several octaves lower than raunchy whiney Mick Jagger, emasculating him as neatly as a veterinary surgeon neuters a tomcat, but with no blood and less agony.
Later, I passed two school girls and realised they were keeping up a unison hum, one long note that stretched all the way from the entrance to the shopping centre to wherever it was they were going.

... apart from the ladies at the flower stall, who were cascading with laughter, oblivious to credit crunches, gloom, threatening loomings and all; they were bursting bubbles of joyful hilarity, loud, open and uninhibited, sending a whoosh of good humour through the afternoon that flushed out sinister rumblings and miserable naggings and that matched the jolly autumn sunshine perfectly.