I was standing next to a woman and then she urinated.

True story.

I apologise for the very descriptive title — but it is what it is.

Last Friday, I was standing minding my own business waiting for a colleague to arrive the agreed 10 minutes early for a meeting.

Head down in my phone, as per usual — the slightly rainy day was leaving me feeling a little flat for a Friday morning. What happened next, reminded me that anything can happen at anytime — and that the bubbles we walk around in can be burst in a second.

As the clock skipped from 9:19 am to 9:20 am, I hear the sound of gushing water and notice a thin stream passing close to my shoe, in fact — running just under the sole. Quickly, I looked back at my phone — before an incredibly potent smell hit me. Then I looked up from my phone again, following the thin stream of water. It wasn’t water.

Stood just 3 feet away from where I had stopped to wait, was a woman leaning against a pillar supporting a building entrance. The woman was urinating whilst leaning against the pillar.

Now, I need to answer the critics reading and thinking that I shouldn’t be writing about this. I considered not writing this, but then remembered the blatant disregard in the eyes of the woman during the couple of minutes she spent urinating in the middle of a public street.

Once my brain had fully registered what was happening, I found myself rooted to the spot as urine hit the street — flowing from under her knee length skirt, splashing up and over her shoes and running down the path under my shoes.

Straight away I considered four things in this order — Is this woman suffering an illness and needs urgent medical attention? Is this woman drunk/drugged? Is this woman suffering with a mental illness? Is this woman homeless and has nowhere else to urinate?

I was staring straight at the woman — and she was staring back. Without blinking she stood comfortably urinating whilst looking me in the eye with a blasé distain for whatever reaction was written all over my face. This woman didn’t care she was urinating 3 feet away from me, at 9:20am in the middle of a commuter heavy pedestrian street — with a group of police also sitting less than 15 feet away drinking coffee outside a cafe.

This woman just didn’t seem to care.

What seemed like a lifetime later, the urine stopped flowing down onto the street — and casually, without care or concern — the woman strolled off and on with her day.

I was left feeling slightly sick, and more than a little confused.

Overall, it was a perfect reminder that just about anything can happen at anytime in this wonderful, complex and often strange world we live in.