Poor kid - I feel sorry for him really. I spot him from the car, standing alone at the bus stop, dwarfed by his own school bag, and trying hard to spit on the already wet pavement.

Well, not spit, exactly. Spit suggests flamboyant ejection - the sort of aiming, pinging thing that people do in Tom Sawyer stories. But this boy, his head tilted like a sick pigeon, is letting gravity do the work, so that his spit has all the pizzazz of a directed dribble.

You know the action. If you are male and over the age of five, it is expected of you. So your mouth is bone dry and you don’t have a bottle of fizz to hand. So what? Get working with your tongue. Bring your nose and throat into play if you must. But produce something.

Spitting, it seems, enjoys a tidal popularity, and for some time now the tide has been unusually high. Several beach huts have already been washed away, in fact, and the council is threatening to close the esplanade in the interests of public safety.

Not since the 1880s has so much saliva been released into the environment. In those days, tobacco chewing was the cause, and only fear of tuberculosis turned the tide. In Europe and the United States, posters went up in every city.

“Gentlemen will not, others must not spit on the floor” they said, and “If you spit on the floor at home, you can do it here”.

But there’s no plug of baccy in this boy’s mouth, nor has he been playing football or running a half marathon. At this time of the morning, he won’t even have drunk the eight tumblers of plain water that doctors urge us to consume daily as part of a healthy diet.

So why, as he waits and waits for the rattling bus, does he continue to suck every last drop of moisture from his mouth and drip it on to the ground beside his monstrous bag?

Is he marking territory, like some solitary tomcat? Or is he doing the opposite, and claiming his right to belong?

The bus rounds the corner as I pass him the second time, and as the brakes squeal I see him muster one last dribble. Then he spots his mates through the window. He is smiling now. They didn’t catch him not spitting.