A speaker meets a man at a bus stop who has picked up a chair from an alley and talks about it with great pride. It's no mass-produced piece, he says, just a good chair waiting for a proper living room, some varnish, and new upholstery. Months later, the speaker finds the same man sitting on the ground by a public telephone, still talking about last winter's burst water main, which briefly brought the neighbourhood together.
The tone starts out amused and gently affectionate, then turns sharper. The speaker suddenly addresses the man directly, calling him a "hooligan" and accusing him of trying to carry his "place in the world" around with him. The man seems stuck in the past, with his hopes reduced to a recycled story and a telephone that doesn't work. The speaker sounds part sympathetic, part irritated, and the final "Uah!" reads like a weary, impatient groan. The mood is wry, with a note of sadness about dreams that never get anywhere.