Reportage: Rubik's conqueror

After Old Street station, 8.57pm

And it really was a conquering; a blitzing, an over-running. Howlingly, repeatedly successful.

If one could be said to be able to over-run a cube.

His left hand was the anchor, slow, almost static, with some fingers twirling. You could see it anchoring Beethoven's First at the keyboard, rocksteady.

Whereas the right was a wizard,a spy, a ghost. 'Dexterous' wasn't an adjective, it was a state of being, as his fingers flew round and round, blurring the nine faces into one flesh-toned bowl of colour.

Sometimes, he even looked down his aquiline nose to see what his digits were doing.

It was impressive enough to distract a woman with a lazy bob of can't-be-bothered sandy hair to stop fiddling in her Oxfam bag for a moment, and imagine what his fingers could do when unleashed on something really worth playing with.

She blushed, and bit her lip.

In hope of banishing the thought, she dived back into her bag to find a book.