Bits

Guy on the train bopping and popping to the music he’s listening to, playing the keys like he’s in the studio with Ye and Murda Beatz, white boy living the dream.

Man in bowler hat welcoming people with umbrellas on this rainy day and his gruff but friendly parody of Dick Van Dyke that every foreigner imagines British people speak like as he booms ‘Good Morning Sir!’, ‘Good Day Madam, enjoy the shopping’. All part of the service at the Lanesborough.

A family of Jewish mother, daughters and sons pass round the prayer book on the morning commute. There are two seats remaining and the two boys get them, their right assumed and not even a raised eyebrow in protest from the mum or seven daughters. The boys start to pepper their Mother with questions on their final destination and how long it will take. They expect an answer and their mother occupied by her zealotry, decides to take herself away from the situation so she can pray in peace on the Piccadilly line to Uxbridge. This leaves the eldest daughter to deal with the boys badgering. She has no patience for them and curtly indicates to the map above their heads and retreats back to her prayers, leaving the two boys pointing and jabbing in their seats until they come up with an answer.

I had a hot dog and chips for dinner tonight. I didn’t want to cook and Arsenal were playing so I found the closest burger van to my work which was all of ten metres away. They didn’t provide much in the way of options. Beef or pork. Bun or baguette. Slatherings of cheese, fried onion and bacon, taste dependent. I chose the sausage because why not. I got chips too for a pudding of sorts. It cost me £8, but I was happy to pay. I drooped some ketchup on both from the dispenser and tried to put some jalapenos inside the hot dog bun to put more flavours in the mix. I wanted to sit or stand whilst I ate instead of trying to eat and walk which would have resulted in ketchup stains on any of my apparel. So, I stood in the car park of the block of flats that are opposite the office and watched the fans mixing as they head to the Emirates, the sounds of animated football chat, stewards giving directions, cars honking and pissed to be stuck in traffic, lots of sounds, lots of life and my own munching.

I got a spontaneous haircut. Middle of nowhere place, looks like it hadn’t seen any customers all day. Lady sitting by the window, like a cat trying to keep awake. She was Lithuanian, direct, she knew how she was going to cut my hair, she told me how it was going to be with no serious options for discussion. Smooth played in the background. The interior of the place seemed to have everything a hairdresser’s should have and yet it all felt at odds, a body nonetheless but a Frankenstein, with limbs different sizes and a cardboard box for a rib cage. Mirrors wanting to be these grand statements, old posters still hanging to the wall, faded and the styles advertised out of favour, still there more out of sadness at the sorry state their absence would further compound on the room. A converted portacabin. Yet the haircut came out favourably.

A mother, a son and a daughter sought directions to Turnpike Lane station. I need to work on my direction giving but hopefully they found where they needed to go. The son, enjoying his role as the man of this expedition, took control of the dialogue, his families representative in talks with this stranger. At the end of my hurried explanation and just as we were about to pass one another into the night, he raised his arm as if stopping all life around him in expectation of some grandiose declaration and uttered the words ‘Good Evenings’, with emphasis on the ‘s’ and wandered with his family off in the direction I had sent him.

I walked past a man blow torching a brick wall, one straight line of flame, not too sure the purpose of it.

I tried to give a fox a tomato, he proceeded to wee on it. Does it say anything about an area by the large number of urban foxes. Foxes in my head, disneyfied, smooth, cunning, debonair creatures. These urban foxes just look hungry, wretched by their adjustment to urban life. Their eyes are big, always watching, their gait uptight, uneasy, they are light on their feet due to a lack of food rather than grace. They move on edge, they jolt and zoom away as soon as human life interacts with their pursuit of food from bins or found on the street which they constantly search for.