Street Sadness

On the tube train into Victoria this morning I stood next to a young muslim man. He was bearded, naturally, and he wore a suit jacket made from three separate fabrics of varying shades of dark blue. The arms were of serge, the yoke was denim, as were the elbow patches, and the main body of the garment was a gently glistening nylon. He wore black nylon trousers. Each of his tan, vinyl loafers was held in place by a green and red striped band that ran over the top of each foot and attached to an elaborate golden clasp. He had a discrete black mole on the very tip of his nose. He was standing, eyes down, reading the Quran, which nestled in a special leather wallet. His lips moved silently as he read and re-read the beautiful curling tendrils of the script on the page. He stood in the midst of the commuters and never once looked up from his book between the nine stations of his journey. I looked around the carriage at the other travellers. A plump woman with over-sized spectacles, wearin...

On the Central Line tube this morning I stood next to a man in his mid-thirties. It was after rush hour so the carriage was not too crowded. The man inspected his hands carefully, one after the other. He seemed mesmerised by them as he turned them this way and that, holding them close to his face. I noticed that on his left palm he had a severe, livid case of eczema that spread across the base of his thumb and around his wrist like a crusty bracelet. He began to gingerly probe this with his right index finger. Then he began to delicately scratch at the edges of the afflicted area with his fingernail. I turned away, rather repulsed, as the scurf-dust fell away. Two stations later I happened to glance back at the man, who was now emboldened in his task and was furiously peeling great flakes of sloughed skin off his hand and flicking them away, out onto the carriage floor. Stepping over the sheets of  his derma-slag I got out at the next station and carefully checked my shoes for any ...

It is Sunday afternoon in late October and the London days are beginning to show their age. People in the street have started to wear scarves and coats as things start to chill. I sit in a small local restaurant waiting for my lunch to be served. Behind me two girls in their mid-twenties are having a heated argument about the Beatles’ song,    “I think you’ll find that it is ‘Eleanor Risby’!”    “No! Just think about it! Helena Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her man.” I rolled my eyes and tune them out. Across from me two young gay men, clearly on a first date, are nervously skirting around the business of talking themselves up. The one with sandy blonde hair says to the Vietnamese one,    “So, I always thought that if I could be the first to introduce a vegetable to another country that had never seen it before I could be like Sir Walter Raleigh with his potatoes”. A chubby six-year-old gaily trips around the room in her Sunday ...

For dinner I tried an Indian restaurant near where I am staying. Through the large plate glass window I could see a tall Indian waiter standing to attention next to a tiny bar at the end of the room. As I pushed the door open he strode towards me with a beaming grin.   "Hello, sir. Good evening sir. Would you like a table? Is it for one, sir?" He ushered me to a table in the corner, next to the bar. He brought me a menu, which seemed complete and very reasonably priced. I ordered the Lamb Sag, some plain rice and a bottle of Indian beer. He took the order down the creaky stairs to the kitchen below. As I waited for my meal to arrive I looked around at my surroundings.  It was early so I was the only customer. There were eight tables, set with expensive-looking, very tacky chairs - stretched white leather over chrome-look, bendy metal frames. Set into the bar, low to the ground, was a large fish tank containing two happy-looking goldfish that swam eternal figure-e...

It was lovely to catch up last night with dear friends P. and M. before they head back to Australia. We first met in the late 1970s at The Victorian College of the Arts, in Melbourne, when we were all just babies. The venue for the evening was Drummond Street, Euston, for a great Indian meal at Taste of India (delicious food and handsome, friendly staff). Much hilarity ensued as we reminisced about the wonderful, anarchic, art-student days of the Punk era, which we all agreed were the golden years of our liv es. A few of the items on the evening's agenda were as follows: driving down Hoddle Street and everyone is completely off their chops on LSD - the road was writhing like a Van Gogh painting;  the girl on speed who threatened people with a tiny metal earring shaped like a dagger which she took out of her ear for the purpose; someone sets a boat on fire in a Richmond street - it explodes; a dozen eggs smashed into the Richmond public letterbox; a friend makes a frantic dash to th...