First paragraph of "She Talks to Rainbows"

For once, no one was interested in the local crazy lady. Over a hundred local residents had gathered around the cedar on the usually busy Bristol Street, the shops abandoned, their owners standing in the doorways, watching. The crowd was agitated, whorling like a storm on a weather report, with the tree at its centre. Closest to the tree, four people, all history teachers from the nearest comprehensive school, had superglued their hands together in a semi-permanent ring-o-roses. But she was the real eye of the storm, standing some way off from everyone else, tall, proud, silent and rigidly still, while the wind caught her long snowy hair and faded skirts that blew like the tattered robes of an ancient gypsy Madonna. The hazy midday sunlight haloed her from behind. She had her old camera around her neck as always, but she wasn’t looking down into the viewfinder, she was looking directly at me with her other-worldly grey eyes.