By eight the glass column on the square already had a queue. Overnight someone had clipped a flight of tiny wooden stairs to its side, and the degrees were climbing them one by one, pausing to nod at a scarf left on the railing.
We asked a woman who had not quite decided whether to put the scarf on. "They greeted the wool first," she said. "Then they took another step. I waited with them. It felt rude to sit before they finished."
A line in the park keeper's notebook was already waiting: the bench may be used when the degrees stop and bow. This morning they stopped halfway up, considered the scarf, and agreed it was warm enough to sit without gloves, provided you still said good morning to the glass.