Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

I hear their high pitched giggles before I see them. They’re excited about something and are all jittery from the saccharin of too many orangeades and chuppa chups.

As they saunter into my sightline my jaw drops slightly in shock/surprise. Loitering in front of me, gawping towards the shiny automatic doors of the entrance to the Bus Station over the road, are Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee in colour co-ordinated tracksuits. One is tracksuited in pale lemon yellow, her outfit finished off with a white bolero cardigan, white shoes and cheap white plastic bangles from the market. The other is the antithesis to this scheme in a white tracksuit with yellow bolero, shoes and accessories. They are young, about 14, so I forgive their bad taste. I wonder if they will look back on these outfits with regret the way that I reminisce about my own fashion faux pas.

These two girls are exactly the same age, height and build. At first glance you would barely be able to tell them apart, but should you look twice or your gaze linger a while (as their colour scheme demands) you may notice a different in the tones of their skin. One of the girls has Afro Caribbean heritage and the other does not.

The paler of the two has limp hair in comparison to her friend’s buoyant afro ‘do’. She has adopted a crimped-fake-hair-extension-pony-tale attachment to compensate for this and to maintain the similarity of their appearance (shattering the façade of their alikeness would devastate the dramatic impact of their carefully planned and eagerly anticipated ‘entrance’ into the Bus Station over the road).

I wonder which out of the pair had had this bright idea – and which boy in particuar they hope to impress with their spectacle.

They’ve been hanging around on the steps of the Mecca bingo for some time but now they are ready to embark on their rite of passage through the automatic doors of the Bus Station. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee may or may not realise that integration into the posse of teenagers who amuse themselves daily at the Bus Station (a group of which huddle outside the doors sharing a cigarette end) will be their final step away from the innocence of their childhood.