We got as far as the bakery window.

Owen told me he was moving just as my watch announced the end of the warm-up. I pressed the wrong button and started the interval twice.

"Moving where?" I asked. He said three streets away. I had already begun preparing a much larger response.

We usually ran the same loop on Thursday. We talked at the beginning and at the end, with a middle section in which my contributions became mostly vowels. That evening he had a flat to describe, a difficult decision about his desk and a question about whether I could help carry a lamp.

I suggested we walk for a bit. After a bit, I suggested we keep walking.

The route could change too.

Neither of us was injured or trying to exercise through illness. I simply wanted the conversation, and he seemed pleased to have time to finish a sentence. We turned towards the street with the bakery instead of the path where we usually began the faster part.

The window contained a cake with a very serious fondant pigeon on it. Owen thought it was a dove. We stood there until the baker came out to bring in a sign and settled the matter. It was a pigeon. Someone had requested it specifically.

I took a photograph for him because, he said, a person about to change address needed to know which neighbourhood produced this kind of work.

We made one definite arrangement.

By the next corner, I knew which day the keys would be ready, why the desk might not fit and how much affection Owen had for a lamp I remembered as being mostly shade.

I could help with the lamp on Saturday. I could not help with the whole move. He said that was fine; his brother had the van and a strong opinion about loading order.

We walked back through the residential streets. My watch still thought we were doing an interval session. I ended it and chose the ordinary walking record. It would have survived without a record, but I liked having the route.

At home, I moved nothing around to make up for the run. I checked Saturday's time, ate dinner and sent Owen the pigeon photograph.

He replied with a picture of the lamp beside a tape measure. I had remembered it correctly. The shade was going to require its own seat.