Well, not quite, but it had that Dylan-esque, slightly-surreal feel about it, and if it hadn’t been a real sequence of events and observations, would have sounded like a few songs I can think of. What am I talking about? The following little vignette:
There we were, walking through London the other evening near the Islington area… I had just recorded a product testimonial for the QVC shopping channel… was deep in conversation; vaguely aware of the commotion of two ambulances in the street; glimpsed a bicycle crumpled in the road, dented wheel spinning; sidled past a couple of deaf street-cleaners wearing bright yellow reflective jackets, sweeping up broken glass, gesturing to each other in fluid sign-language across 30 feet of road; rounded the corner, accosted by a man carrying a big old vacuum cleaner cradled in his arms, saying “do you know anyone who wants to buy an old Hoover?”
Hey, trust me, I couldn’t MAKE this stuff up! Or if I could, I’d be writing songs instead… Hmmm… the last time I did this walk was the crazy day a whale found its way up the Thames (blogged it on 21st Jan)… Now, QVC… that’s a great story for another day: and you thought Amazon was big…
October 20, 2006 at 10:08 am
Hi there, yes it was true, I can vouch that it was 100% true, it was on chapel Market st in Angel, at about 8pm, also known as the-end of-the-world-street. Also that day I had been in the lift at SOAS and there had been a similarly bizarre experience. The lift was too heavy because there were too many people and so people were stepping in and out of the lift, whilst we we tried to assess what the maximum number of people the lift could take in order to take off. Once the lift finally took off. My friend recounted a story of how once a fellow student had been stuck in the lift for 2 hours whilst we were participating in a seminar on the 5th floor. Perhaps he was cursed it was suggested. Then as if to show the lifts own agency, and it was the lift, not any other force that was in control, the lift then stopped at every floor and opened the doors and steadfastly refused to ascend to the fifth floor. First it went down to the Basement and then stopped at every floor, just when we reached the fourth floor it would go down again. In the end we had to desert the lift and take the stairs from the 3rd floor! It was a peculiar and a little unnerving experience, so much so that we abandoned the lift at a lower floor expecting that perhaps the lift would never reach the fifth floor, as it did without fail every other day!
London is a magical place!