things move around

Two workmen had disembowelled the escalator this morning and were doing something monstrous to its insides which made it ululate and belch and berk. I said to a woman who was descending the stairs near me, “sounds like a dinosaur”. From her reaction I couldn’t tell if she agreed with me and found the idea alarming, or disagreed to the point of finding the analogy contemptible. After a second she said something like “it’s awful” or “this waffle”. Her words were muffled by the agonized wailing noise coming from the innards of the escalator. A dinosaur having an appendectomy, I thought, without anaesthetic. But we had reached the bottom of the steps and the woman had gone off into the food court to buy her awful waffles.