RAT MAN

I keep returning to this photograph I took last week. He was sitting by himself in the Bourke Street Mall. His pet rats - Syd and Nancy were happily hiding under his tied-back hair and playing on his shoulders. He doesn't come into the city often and was absorbed by the passing crowd and the fact that no-one had been willing to sit next to him. People were looking but keeping their distance.

I think they are the same people who frown at you when you feed the pigeons and if a bird comes near them or their lunch, they utter expletives and wave their arms erratically, like the mentally ill person in the street, talking out aloud to himself and moving in a disturbing fashion!