Shooting the breeze

Ambient weirdness factor higher than it has been lately. A two on the Beaufort scale, I would judge. Stronger than just blowing smoke sideways. A tangible feeling of it on the face, as though breathing nearby.
First, half of a conversation on a mobile telephone, overheard:
‘He’s stupid. He thinks squirrels came to Britain from North America by flying. He thinks they flew here. First, the Atlantic Ocean’s three thousand miles across, right? And for another thing, squirrels can’t fly!’
Not long after this, I am on the top deck of a bus. There are a lot of things you can see from this vantage point that you miss on the ground. For one, the curious objects that have been placed on top of London’s bus-stops. My favourite is a potato struck all around with coloured, plastic cocktail sticks. It looks like a giant amoeba.
Then there are the trees. As we pulled up, I noticed a small metal name-plate nailed into the bark of a tree. Far too high up to read from the pavement, it was visible only to bus passengers, if they saw it. Very small and faded, I took it to be the scientific name of the tree. I read it:
‘Eugene A Cernan.’
One of the Apollo astronauts. Someone has named a tree after an astronaut, I thought. But not just that one tree. As we passed them, I saw that every single tree on the street had a tiny name-tag bolted to it, and each and every one bore the name of an astronaut. Why? I could not imagine. Perhaps as the trees grow, the tags move a little bit closer to the Moon. They are quite invisible to those on the Earth. Only in transit can they be seen at all.
Then there was the Polish argument. Three Polish people got on. They were in furious debate about something. Or, rather, about someone. I can little understand bits of Polish now and then. It shares its grammar and about half its vocabulary with Russian, which I do know, although the pronunciation is a world of its own.
‘It’s true,’ the older man was saying. He was wearing, for some reason, the Ghana national football strip. His two friends strongly disagreed with him. Tiny scraps came through to me. They were discussing the differences between English people and Polish people and money matters... I had missed the beginning of the argument so had no way of grasping even the gist of it now.
Then a man with a thick African accent interrupted them. I suspected he may actually have been from Ghana.
‘Do not speak about people in a disrespectful way!’ he shouted, in English.
I turned in as much surprise as the Polish people. Does he know? Does he speak Polish? How?
‘Are they listening to us?’ the Ghana-top wearer said, in Polish. His friends waved their hands, dismissing such a daft idea. But they had been disrespectful. I knew just enough to work that out. Did their heckler really understand them, or was he acting up? He interrupted their discussion many times more, though by the end he was laughing to himself like a crazy man. Did he really know Polish, or was he just mad?
By the time I got off, smoke was rising straight again, weather vanes still. The wind of weird had blown over.