Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 10th October 2016

It’s 3:28pm on Monday afternoon, and I’m waiting for Francis out the front of my building. With me are my laptop, my camera, and a copy of Grayson Perry’s Playing to the Gallery.

Other tenants of the building keep walking by and giving me odd looks; it’s cold, and I’m sitting on top of the structure that houses the bins for buildings inside. Also, none of these people know who I am, other than maybe a manifestation of the one of the people they’ve heard in apartment three.

I am completely aware of how insane all looks, but I don’t care. Between 3:20 and 4:20pm, Francis is going to bring me the clothes airer I’ve been waiting for since last Thursday. I never put so much mental energy into a clothes airer before now; come 4:20pm I never want to think about it ever again.

I brought the camera to continue tooling around with the prime lens I inherited before I arrived in the UK. As much as I know these things are best used for portrait photography, but given the fact that the lens is well equipped to work in low-light conditions, I thought it would be worth tooling around with while I waited.

Of course as I started to do this Francis arrived on cue. As he strode down the street, looking rather nonchalant (or, you know, like someone doing their job as opposed to being a weirdo sitting out the front of an apartment building on a Monday afternoon), I felt as if an old-friend was coming home; and that we had been waiting for this moment for far longer than five days.

“I’m Daniel”, I said as he approached the gate.
“Oh yeah,” he replied quizzically, handing me the standard-issue PDA-like device all couriers on Earth are given at birth.

I signed, he said thanks, and then he turned and left. That was the end of Francis and I. What more was there to say?

I opened the door to the building, and lugged the box and my other bits and pieces to the third floor. Laying the box down on the couch, I felt an inner stillness. Something significant had just passed, though unquantifiable. I took out my camera and took pictures, matching its brethren.

This is our box. There are many like it, but this one is ours.