Slow Fast Day

For a day that dragged and at 3.00pm seemed like it would never end I was suprised when I looked up and it was suddenly 5.35. That fear shot through me - the fear that is being locked in the building and not knowing how to get out (at least 2 people have told me this has happened to them). I gladly found that although I was the last there, I wasn't locked in and rushed out into the open air.

Now I find myself sitting on a 63 bus listening to Paulo Conte (singing dancin dancin, chips chips, you're wonderfuel you're wonderfuel good luck ma baby etc). There's a man behind me whose breath smells stale, whose clothes smell of mothballs and who persists in thumping my seat as we wing our way through Southwark, past the Dun Cow Surgery that must be a doctor's but looks like a pub and down onto the Old Kent Road to the Elephant.

The Elephant and Castle is a confusion of merging routes, underpasses, overpasses, market stalls, pink walls, housing towers. They still haven't taken down the christmas decorations.

Then the bus empties out as we turn north along the London Road round the strange roundabout with a war memorial and past the station I always forget exists (Southwark) then over the Blackfriars bridge to the northside.