London is full of characters. Including those who make a habit of writing the obvious. Yes, I am a London Character. Born in glamorous Balham and brought up in the dizzying splendour of, er, Hendon. I thought it would be a rather sophisticated move to relocate to the county of Jane Austen: Hertfordshire. But, Barnet to be precise. Someone has recently had the imagination to deface all town signs in Barnet with an acute accent over the 'e' to give us a more refined image. "Oh yes, I'm from Barn-ay, don't you know."

Barnet is on the end of the Northern Line, which may sound obvious again, to the poor sloggers on the commuting run. But out of towners hardly ever know where it is. Goodness me, I'm creating a tangent. And I was never any good at trigonometry.

Characters in London are much more varied than anywhere else. For a young man of only five foot six with alopecia and a club foot, some of these experiences might have seemed alarming. Fortunately, I was a strapping six foot rugby player with an obsession for drawing cartoons, so they were very fruitful grist for the imagination.

There was the barely clothed tramp in Charing Cross Road impersonating an animated water feature as he urinated across the path of two refined ladies from the counties, one of whom merely said " Good Lord!" as they passed.

There was an alien I spotted on a bus once. Absolutely certain. No eyelashes and no hair. Indeterminate sex. And a strange fishy smell. It never occurred to me to wonder why aliens would travel all the way to Earth with all their super technology only to spend their time on a 102 from Golders Green.

And you sometimes hear about dirty old men on the Underground. Well, what about dirty young women? Yes, my young person was violated by just such a specimen while I was studying my GCSE biology text book. Perhaps she fancied testing me on what I had just learned. It wasn't much (both what I had just learned and what she did), but it was a clear signal which I was either too young or too terrified or both to recognise.

She got off at her stop by placing both her hands on my knees and pushing herself up while staring at me in the eyes. Ooh-er! What if… etc? Such thoughts still return even today to keep me company in the long winter evenings.

If you're travelling home tonight and you notice a six-foot, ex-rugby playing type, all be he with thinning hair and Michael Caine specs grinning privately to himself, perhaps you, too, have just achieved immortality in his list of London characters.


simonelli

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