 |
Order
(Published in BuzzWords, December 2002)
At the bus stop, all colours, ages and races. Big, small, plain, flash, tarty, weird, mad, and god this morning I feel afraid.
Oh no, not this morning please, not this morning! Yes, coming towards me, can of beer in one hand, aluminium stick waving in the other, his face blotchy-red, hair like a silver-grey Brillo pad. Yes, here he comes.
His stick scatters a young girl and a man wearing yellow lycra shorts, and he walks right up to me, the shiny glint of his stick is tickling my ribs. He pins me against the glass side of the bus shelter.
'Spare a few pounds? Can yer spare some'at, mate?'
Everyone looks at us, then backs away. I can't slip out.
Then this little old black lady in a floppy, white hat steps forward.
'No! move away, you shouldn't do that. Here, me give you some chocolate and I pray for you....'
He stamps his stick on my toe.
The little black lady touches his shoulder, and turns her head to glance up the slope of Mare Street. An old white woman, with peroxide-blonde hair and face held together with foundation, looks at him too. Soon the entire straggle of us are looking up Mare Street, though I can only peer out between the little old black lady's white hat and the cropped hair of my captor. Even my captor looks, but doesn't take his stick off my foot.
Walking down the middle of the road, followed at a respectful distance by a 38 bus, is a tall, dark-looking man, with thick dark hair and a wide smile.
His arms are dancing high at his sides as he directs the strings of the large, furry pink-and-black mouse that is leading now not one but two, three and four buses.
He stops adjacent to the bus stop.
'Get out the way will you, mate!' shouts a bus inspector.
'No, man, no, this is art!' sings a Nigerian man in a swirling print green-and-gold shirt.
A few schoolboys clap, and the little black lady brings her hands together in prayer, 'Hallelujah! Hallelujah!'
The dark man lifts his right hand and the red front feet of the mouse rise up and the mouse's head lurches from side to side. At the bus stop we all crowd round as the mouse begins to dance.
From the other side of the road, outside Marks and Spencer and McDonald's, people are watching.
Soon there is a circle round the magic mouse. The man presses a button in a plastic bag at his side and music serenades the dancing animal. It darts forward, backwards, and soon no one sees the strings because this mouse is alive!
A policeman, smiling, taps the Arab on the shoulder.
'That's enough, don't you think, guv?'
The strings reappear, the mouse is folded by its owner into a plastic bag by th owner.
I look down. The tip of the aluminium stick has left my toe, and the empty can of beer is laid carefully against the bus shelter. Then the Brillo-pad hair man slips away, eating a slab from a thick bar of chocolate. His stick twinkles in the Mare Street sun.
| |
|
