11. "I thought I'd paint the whole fucking thing gold."

"I thought I'd paint the whole fucking thing gold," says Amanda. "And then I'll sand off the gold from the edges and corners, so it looks battered."

We are looking at a chest of drawers lying on its side in a yellow skip. The pale sun is glinting off the puddles in the road from last night's rain. The air is fresh and cold.

It is good quality, solid dark wood. Deep drawers, lots of space. There's nothing wrong with it - it's not broken, just a bit old and scarred on the top - so why would anyone put it in a skip? You could give it to a friend, or put it on freecycle, or give it to charity. It doesn't need to be thrown away. It's still good. The whole thing is so wasteful it makes me hugely angry.

Amanda blows out a plume of blue-grey smoke.

"I'll just finish this," she says, waving the cigarette. "And then we'll haul it out of there."

(When she rang me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk this morning, I knew there was going to be an agenda. Amanda doesn't go for walks. Ever)

"Yeah, you'd better finish inhaling your future cancer before we get on to the heavy lifting," I say. I climb up on the edge of the skip. One of us, if not both, will have to get in to make this work. As Amanda has apparently decided stilettos are the best choice for moving furniture, I imagine this will be me.

"Take all the drawers out first," Amanda advises, continuing to smoke. "Then it'll be easier."

"Whatever," I mutter, and start pulling the drawers out. A large black beetle runs out of one near my hand, making me scream. I mostly love all insects, but not when they're - sudden -

"How are we going to get this back to the flat?" I ask. "Seeing as how neither of us can drive, and even if we could drive, neither of of us have a car."

"It's not far," says Amanda.

"You don't seriously mean carry it? It's going to weigh a ton!" I fold my arms and glare at her. The flat is 15 minutes' walk away unencumbered with a piece of vintage furniture.

"What do you think we should do? As you point out, we don't have any other method of getting it back."

"We?" I say. "Where's 'we'? I can quite happily go home and leave this in the skip. How about 'you' don't have any other method of getting it back?"

It is an hour later. We are sitting on the chest of drawers, which is now halfway between the skip and Amanda's flat. We are taking a break. I rub my aching biceps. Amanda swings her feet and I watch as her bright blue shoes flick in and out of a patch of sunlight.

A sparrow is hopping around the cobblestones nearby, eyeing us up hopefully. It is out of luck. I don't have anything to eat, and if I did I would be eating it myself.

A man walks down the street towards us. He's wearing jeans, black boots, and a knee-length Afghan coat embroidered with red and gold flowers. Even though it's a fairly cold day in May, the coat is open and he doesn't have a shirt on under it. He's too thin, shoulder-length messy black hair, pale skin, a bird the size of my palm tattooed either side of his navel. I suddenly realise he has a scar, a Y-shaped scar running down either side of his neck and joining to run down his belly. Like an autopsy scar. I wonder if it's a mark from an operation or an accident, or if he has done it to himself as some kind of a statement.

As he passes me, I catch his smell; incense, weed, sweat. Where's he going so purposefully? Home? A mansion, a squat, a hotel, a tent in a field, a terrace with a wife and three kids, a terrace with his boyfriend and three dogs? Where's he been? I surmise from his smell that wherever he has been he has had a special cigarette, but apart from that I don't know. I feel my way into being him; the wind chilly on my stomach, the warmth of the coat over my shoulders, the shopping bag in my right hand and the cobbles under my boots, a little stoned, a little tired maybe.

I shake my head, stand up. I am not interested in self deception. Sometimes – regularly – my own perceptual filters piss me off.

I don’t know what he’s thinking; how can I? I know what I imagine he is thinking - what I would think if I was him - but that’s not the same thing as reality. My ideas of him are filtered through my own perceptions and preconceptions. I know enough to understand that whatever he's like, he's like nothing I have imagined.

Amanda stands up too. We each pick up one end of the chest of drawers again and start staggering towards her flat and a cup of tea.