Bits

1.

I saw this woman; she was there, and then she wasn’t! I think I was looking past her, out at the traffic grumbling past Holborn Sainsbury’s along…the road there; it’s one long road stretching all the way from Cambridge Heath to Shepherd’s Bush, but it has maybe ten names. Hackney Road, Old Street, Clerkenwell Road, Theobalds Road…then, for just a little way (what would be a block if London was a grid) it’s Vernon Place, which is what I was looking at, Bloomsbury Way, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Marble Arch, Bayswater Road, Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park Avenue. Twelve names.

So I wasn’t quite looking at this woman but I saw her drop out of sight abruptly, with a slap against the polished floor. She popped back up pretty quickly, apparently unhurt but staring at the floor in front of her. Then she bent down and picked up the cause of her fall.

She held it up in front of her as if examining it against the light, and it was, no lie, a banana skin.

She looked disgusted. Not because it was black and rotten - it wasn’t, it was bright and fresh - and only partly because someone had dropped it there. No, what really offended her was the cliché: A banana skin? Seriously? Nobody actually slips on a banana skin. Do they?

She carried it to the door and binned it.

How do I know that for her, the biggest insult was the hackneyed cartoon nature of the thing? I don’t, I totally made it up. Not the actual event, that really happened, but my interpretation of her facial expression? Just my interpretation. I could be wrong.

2.

I saw a dead submarine once. Down in Portsmouth, coming back from the Isle of Wight in Ali’s tiny old custard-coloured Cinquecento, we passed over a big inlet at low tide; wide, flat bodies of sand bracketed a trickle of water, and on one of them lay this thing, a long ovoid like a child’s drawing, on its side, out of its element. Although it was massive and rusty and definitely deserved the title Hulk, it was comical and pathetic too. Totally emasculated (and, yes, phallic, although the conning tower…you want to get that looked at, mate), like a dried-out beached fish.

3.

(2003. I’m in hospital, paralysed after a road accident)

Good morning! Well, morning anyway. Looks like the Greene Ward working day’s beginning, blurry figures strolling along the corridor, some sticking their heads in to say hello to the nurses who’ve come in early to hang about. It’s sunny outside - little patches of light are stretching gently across the wall - and, apart from the obvious (we’re in hospital), all is well.

Well, no; there’s one detail that could do with a little attention. During the night I’ve kicked the sheet down to the foot of the bed, so I’m just lying here in institution green pyjama trousers, and what I laughingly call my “penis” has fallen out of the fly and is reclining against my thigh, pointing towards the sunshine. How did that happen? I must have been thrashing about good style.

Ah, no - I bet I got an erection, which shouldered its way out of my trousers, then subsided. I hope it was dark at the time, and there wasn’t a group of nurses standing round warming their hands on it. Or playing Buckaroo.

Nobody’s noticed. Yet. Well, I have, I’ve totally fucking noticed, but none of the people passing by in the corridor or coming on shift in the ward has paused. Which is a good thing, surely? Well yes, but it’s also a bit mortifying. I’ve got my nob out…and nobody’s noticed.

Hello?

Anyone?

Now maybe it’s nurse instinct; they see, but decide it’s better to ignore. No, I’m mugging myself, it’s too early in the day for that kind of rapid processing. Nobody’s noticed.

“Hello Stephens!” says Aslam, rolling in, his usual bouncy Tigger self. Then he pauses. “Oh!” he adds, steps back so he’s between me and the door, and adjusts my fly. “OK!” he pronounces. Indeed yes, OK! Now I can relax for a while before someone comes to hose me down.