husk.org / blog. chaff. occasional witterings.

Random item, twenty

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Random item, nineteen

Sitting on the top floor of a bus at traffic lights, as Theobalds Road crosses Southampton Row, a man tosses a lost flip-flop over the road - and the top of the passing traffic - to another man, who hands it down to the small child who managed to lose it on the far side of the crossing.

The man and boy turn and carry on heading east.

Random item, eighteen

Waiting for a bus to the West End near St Paul's Cathedral, an open-top double decker rolled along on the number 23 route. This is odd. Open-top buses are usually reserved for eye-wateringly expensive guided tours. However, it's a standard bus number, and the conductor was happy to let me on. Cue a very pleasant ride down Fleet Street and the Strand, wind (intermittently) in my hair and sun (except when shaded) in my eyes, looking at the varying building styles along the way.

Random items, seventeen

Through the trees outside Euston Station, dappled sun somehow formed into moving bright circles, overlapping back and forth over the back of the double-decker bus in front of the one I'm on.

A tiny bow of spectrum in thin, lofty clouds as the sun sets on a the same June evening, seen through the high windows of the local, upstairs suddenly discovered and approved of.

Later, in a darkening sky, watching the still-bright contrail of a plane moving behind it from south to north. Thinking of lyrics; 'jets look like comets at sunset'.

Random item, sixteen

A man steps onto the Northern Line train as it waits at Bank, clutching a Rubik's Cube. It doesn't look to me as if he's desperately good at it; the faces are still mismatched quite badly, and he's not concentrating on getting the corners right. As the train pulls off I continue to watch (as unobtrusively as possible, of course; this is London, and it doesn't pay to be obviously nosy) as he picks and fiddles, rotating the slices one way and another, twenty years out of time but seemingly fine.

Random item, fifteen

It's a Bank Holiday Monday and we're sitting having an evening meal in a somewhat full Wagamama's, and suddenly a hush falls over the place. Turning, a woman is standing on a table, where she yells out 'That man's called Ken, and he's lovely' as the object of her declaration moves towards the door, trying to keep out of everyone's way. As she jumps off the table and runs after him, he says something like 'stay off the sake; it's lethal'.

Conversation resumes, louder than before.

Random item, fourteen

Standing by a bus stop on a quiet, out of the way road, watching the neat grid of lights of the flats down the road flicking on and off as a dark, seemingly invisible tree wafts back and forwards in front of them.

Random items, thirteen

Taking the Circle Line into work because of snow, and seeing huge and complex reflections of the low sun on a building in Farringdon.

Seeing a man carrying a huge bunch of flowers on the Bakerloo line on a Friday evening.

Condensation on the inside of a number 10 bus window turning every streetlight into a spectral halo.

Random item, twelve

Walking past the bookshops, instrument retailers and art college on Charing Cross, glancing at passersby, and double-taking when I see a woman next to a large fuzzy yellow object - a four-foot tall Winnie the Pooh - at a bus stop, waiting for the Number 19.

We exchange smiles. My grin widens as I walk away, shaking my head in amusement.

Random item, ten

Sunday, ending the third successive 'last good weekend of summer'. So there's sun on my back as I wander lazily up the road, and suddenly windfall cherries bombard me as a gust of wind disturbs their tree. Ripe and hard they fall, blurs of red before me and flattened remnants of others on the floor before me.

I smile at the man at the corner as I walk on towards the Tube.