City life offers regular snap shots into other people’s lives with no chance to find out what happened next? Little dramas glimpsed in passing on the bus or train, chance eaves drops caught on the tube. Like the to butch Germanic women in ski coats arguing on the steps of saint Paul's the other day, how can you have such a fierce argument at 8:50 in morning and still take cheesy photos?
Or the guy on the bendy bus this morning. He was a youngish Asian guy in the typical low
er level financial industry attire; cheap suit, big tie, hair gel but an anorak and his rucksack straps were over both shoulders. He looked like he was on his way to work (freshly showered and ironed), so nothing strange at all except he was cradling a cute little black kitten! He was stroking and cooing to it very attentitively. So was it “take your pussy to work day? Or did he just hide it in his desk? Was he going home which still doesn’t solve the quandary? Did it go something like this “Lee can I borrow your stapler? Oh you seem to have litter of kittens in your desk draw” We will never know.Less than a few steps later, I was almost struck by an ageing rusty eastern European looking jeep. I was about to remonstrate (I was in the right for a change) when
I saw the occupants, at the wheel was a large bear of a man in a huge Russian style fur hat, large coat and muffler. In the back was clearly his babushka, an older woman also in a Russian fur hat and coat holding a large cream cake, her head jerking back from being inches from the icing. She was shouting at her son(?) whilst holding this cake precariously, it was like some strange Dadaist play.Had they driven all the way from Murmansk like this? Would the cake get to Tooting in one piece? Did they notice me giggling?
Lastly I’m sure I saw Nick Cotton walking up Leather lane the other day, I’m not sure what he‘s doing now a days but he was carrying a brief case which didn’t seem an actorly thing to do. Maybe he’s fallen back into his bad old ways (he is still “alive” in Eastenders?) and has become a bag man for a dodgy jeweller in Hatton Garden, or may be he’s a mason it was one of those sort brief cases? We will never know.Desperate car ads of our time?
1 comment:
I had a friend whose Mum would take her cat on the train - in her handbag, which would sometimes peep it's head out and freak the commuters.
A couple of years ago (possibly more, but no more than four). I saw Chris Evans in Liverpool St. Station at lunchtime, in the main downstairs bit, slumped against the barrier for platform one, in a grubby old mac eating a lunch from a carrier bag - with only person asking "Are you Chris Evans?" about a year later he was riding high at Radio 2.
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