City Slacker
I’m not meeting anyone under the clock at Waterloo Station, but I always pause as I pass. A day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t imagined myself in the classic movie Brief Encounter (in sepia of course) waiting for the beautiful heroine played by Celia Johnson. Although a pointless exercise at 9 am on a chilly, wet, drab, Monday morning, I try to spot potential hopeless romantics, though it’s the usual identically dressed business people and street sleepers who’ve come in from the cold. Joining the hoards marching to work, trailing like columns of soldier ants out of the concourse, I’m instantly walking in line to London time, a quickened pace which allows you to blindly (miraculously) make your way across the city without bumping into anyone. Drawn to the aroma of coffee and fresh bagels I grab a bite at the same vendor by the foot bridge at the side of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where the barista (although not American) calls everyone ‘Buddy’ – if he sometimes forgets (which is seldom) I’m kind of put out, feeling my day hasn’t begun as it should.
‘Free, coffee today, Buddy – customer loyalty.’
I’m in heaven as Stan (his imagined name) places the good will gesture on the counter, then cooly moving on to the next customer who hasn’t (to my strange delight) earned a freebie as I smugly slurp away and people watch. A woman with an outstretched hand staggers my way. Dropping some lose change into the polystyrene cup, she says: ‘bless you.’ Like Stan, she’s part of the morning ritual. Her name is Maria and as her name suggests a Saint of sorts, sharing her takings with whichever homeless person begging along the Embankment needs it.
‘Maria!’ they shout to her from their cardboard encampment, ‘get us some change and a ciggie if there’s one going!’ I instantly think of Westside Story: The most beautiful sound I ever heard, Maria, Maria. Emptying her pockets on the ground in front of them, she then suddenly takes off at manic speed across the river like she’s late for an important date.
After eavesdropping on a conversation about us all living in a simulation, I continue on my journey across The Thames, all the time turning to my right to gaze down the grey, murky, river towards Blackfriars’ Bridge (which I’ve never crossed) where the cruise and ferry boats are already heading downstream towards Tower Bridge and Greenwich. Almost at the tube station on the other side, a busker is aptly singing Zombie, by the Cranberries as we trail past single file and I fail to drop a coin in the hat as I’ve given it all to St. Maria.
Heading towards The Strand, I feel I’m rising up through the guts of the city to the grander buildings where the remnants of the British Empire loom like stooping, creaking old men. Past Grubby fast-food outlets, graffiti adorned hoardings and pop-up phone case shops, I’m soon on the main thoroughfare facing down towards Trafalgar Square. Feeling like I should at least salute Lord Nelson, I instead nod in his direction and kind of growl under my breath at the four lions below the column (this is a new development and not something I would recommend). Stopping briefly at the crypt café of St. Martin-in-the-fields I’m tempted to treat myself to another coffee. A dark, atmospheric, and might I say foreboding place, it’s not somewhere I usually stay for long – after all it was intended for the dead and during the Plague years was piled high with corpses. Not today, I tell myself crossing the road to the National Portrait Gallery where there’s a David Bowie exhibition. On cue, Life on Mars plays effortlessly in my head (I’m very suggestable – an advertiser’s dream).
Avoiding Tottenham Court Road, I turn left and make my way up to Chinatown. Here the streets are narrower, interconnected by dank, squalid ally-ways in which your imagination can fool you into thinking that you are in imminent danger. Stepping through the red ornamental arch, the call of food, food, hits me like a gastronomical freight train. Stomach rumbling, my eyes drawn to colour and texture, rows of flattened headless chickens hang from hooks in shop windows, taunting me as I pass, reminding me that despite their appearance I’d gobble them down in a jiffy. I want to purchase everything in sight, stuffing my pockets with dumplings, cookies and that mechanical cat which waves its paw.
Like most mornings, I’m now stalling, avoiding the inevitable as I reduce my steps to sadly-nearly-at-work-speed, stopping to check my reflection in shop windows, then reading a billboard saying that I should buy teeth whitener to look younger. ‘And look like everyone else,’ I add, petulantly, kicking a discarded Coke can into the gutter. Doing a full circle, I head back to the far side of Leicester Square where my ticket kiosk awaits. A pokey one room cube with a bathroom at the back, it’s where you can buy and pick up West End theatre tickets. Retrieving my tie from my pocket, I loop it over my head like a hangman’s noose as I reluctantly punch in the security code to open the shutters which I notice someone has sprayed Capitalism Costs Lives across them.
Smiling face, straight tie, I gaze out across the Square, ready with a cheerful, staff handbook demeanor to welcome the first tourist of the day, reminding myself that a sitting in the warm job – not doing much, is better than an outside one.
Just then there’s a rap on the glass, and a head suddenly springs up like a jack in the box. Startled, I slump back in my chair.
‘Any spare change; ciggies, free tickets? – God loves a trier.’
The most beautiful sound I ever heard - it’s Maria: grinning, toothless, and so holy – an urban apparition, standing supreme with outstretched arms and a bottle of cheap cider in her hand. Amen.
