Selected scenes from the capital: A smoker’s modest proposal. A mobile art installation. Cheap thrills in the sweet shop. A steam train cameo…
Two men are smoking outside a supermarket in Balham. A slightly shabby man approaches them.
“Can I get one of those fags?” he asks.
“Sorry,” says one of the smoking men. “These are literally our last ones.”
Their interlocutor frowns, thinks for a moment.
Then, without a trace of irony, he makes his final offer: “Can you guys share, and give me that one?”
* * *
A young woman, looking understandably self-conscious, gets on the Circle Line service at Embankment wielding a 6ft-wide landscape canvas. She has turned it onto its shorter side for ease of carriage.
Counterintuitively, the wide painting is a portrait, rendered via a combination of glowing maroon, rusty brown and blood orange.
The subject, whose face is confined to the far right of the canvas, is a bearded man with his mouth agape.
As the woman moves across inside the train I squint at the subject in his undignified – if temporary – position: at a 90° angle and very close to the floor.
It’s challenging to draw any firm conclusion about whether he’s in agony or ecstasy, and whether his contorted face reflects the golden glare of fluorescent lighting or the marks of some recent violence. Perhaps that was the artist’s intention.
The woman props herself and her burden in a vacant corner by the opposite set of doors.
She is obscured by the painting like a crab beneath a shell
Her slight figure is immediately and completely obscured by the tall painting, as if she were a legionary taking cover behind a shield, or a shy crustacean disappearing beneath a shell.
Now the vivid artwork seems to stand totally alone, dominating the drab and sparsely populated entrance to the carriage.
The seated passengers ignore this surreal arrangement, lest their curiosity somehow implicate them as the willing patrons of a mobile art installation.
* * *
Approaching Piccadilly Circus I walk past one of the largest of the capital’s ubiquitous souvenir shops.
Its cavernous interior and exposed ceiling stand in contrast to the garish neon towers of cuddly octopus toys lining the entrance. The persuasive sound of ‘Cheap Thrills’ thumps rhythmically out onto the street.
A powdery topnote of cheap bubble gum wafts out from the sweet shop nearby; I can smell it even through my facemask.
A security guard is milling around near the entrance – to do what, I wonder? Do hoodlums habitually rush the place to scrump great handfuls of foam shrimp and chocolate mice? Evidently the thrills still aren’t cheap enough for some.
* * *
Alone in the house, I notice a faint, rhythmic, industrial chuffing sound coming from somewhere outside.
I’m curious about the source of the noise.
For the better part of a year our neighbours have been undertaking extensive building work. A procession of skip trucks and HGVs has shunted in and out of our cul de sac, beeping their reverse alarms, whirring their cantilevers and tail lifts. But that work seemed to have been completed months ago.
I go to the front window and crane my neck, but our road is clear of traffic. The volume increases slightly, and becomes more familiar. The sound of a steam train, perhaps?
I scramble to the rear of the house like an excited child, hoping for a glimpse. From our upstairs window, a distant section of the nearby railway line is visible through an inverted triangle formed between two rooftops.
But there’s nothing there. I’ve already missed it.
Then, rising above the terracotta rooftops into the blue sky, I notice an unmistakable succession of steam puffs, rising steadily into the atmosphere.
I’m by no means a train enthusiast, but the romance and rarity of a steam engine sighting has few parallels, especially given the visual tedium of most modern railway stations.
Eight years previously I was standing on platform 6 of East Croydon station one Monday morning. I was wishing it was still the weekend, and was probably fantasising about my first coffee of the day.
At that moment, a ‘doubleheader’ coasted majestically into view, puffing steam into the winter air, like a dragon doing backstroke. It felt like a visitation.
On this December morning, seeing the steam over the rooftops was enough. I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Kong, but I could see the tree canopy quivering, as he made his way noisily through the thick jungle to points unknown.
