Slow Saturday South Bank Stroll

It was busy, really busy. There was much to see: some kind of fisheries festival in Hays Galleria with oysters and champagne bars, demonstrations on how to fillet fish, octopus balloons, ice-sculpting; David Blane suspended over the Thames; and all sorts of other money making scams up and down the Thames pathway.



I don't know why I thought it would be at all possible but I expected Mr Blane to be hanging upside down by his ankles. As ludicrous as I thought the idea was that he could possibly last for longer than half an hour without the blood pressure in his head exploding, I started thinking that perhaps he could reverse the flow of blood in his body (I know I know severe blond moment...) but like the child passing asked her dad, "is it magic?" I thought perhaps he really was as amazing as his street tricks seem. So when I realised he was not hanging upside down by his ankles but was suspended in a glass box from a crane I thought maybe he could last quite a bit longer than half and hour. It isn't going to be much of a spectacle if today was anything to go by, however. He slept, admittedly naked top half. He woke and feebly waved at the crowd to a roar and applause. He sat up. He tried to screen himself from the sun. He put the quilt up against the sunshine. He drank some water. He slept. He had trousers on. He had a huge tattoo on his back. His hair was longer than we had previously thought (but considering he had been asleep, has no mirror and no gel - it was likely to be kind of messed up).



We saw some people practising for some kind of performance on the next building along from the Greater London Assembly building. It reminded me of De La Guarda because they were doing their signature running along a vertical surface thing. Dangling on ropes and leaping off the side of the glass building - made amazing reflections. Couldn't find a reference to it at all in Time Out however.



The ice sculpture slowly melted away until the whole fishy thing was over. Outside the Tate Modern there were people selling cheap crap batteries, playing bad music, drawing portraits and the budgie man with his trained birds (it all seemed like very old fashioned entertainment - more suited to Chapel Street market in the 1970s - like the man with the monkey dressed in wool clothing that we used to have our picture taken with). And a crowd of people watched the man climb his trick ladder and take the photocopied £20 note from its perch at the top. £1 a go. How hard can it be? Youths dared each other and all of them went away red faced. Like the man with the wobbly bicycle - you can't ever win at these games however hard you think about how to compensate for its deformity.