Wednesday, 1 October 2008

Tales of the Unexpected

What I love most about London is how you encounter the unexpected everyday. You bump into old friends on Oxford Street. You experience one culture in one place then a totally different one five minutes away. You wouldn’t expect to see someone having an energetic conversation with a block of wood-but you do. No matter how often things like this happen, you are still surprised when they do.

I didn’t anticipate being serenaded on the way home from work last night but then Dalston’s answer to Johnny Cash sang to me like a bluebird.

Talkative, guitar-wielding Liam sang well (he thinks he sounds like Rod Stewart, I’m not sure this is an altogether accurate comparison) and played passionately with the grandest, strumming finales I have ever encountered off-stage. Rarely relinquishing eye-contact from behind his Bono-inspired pink sunnies, he played all the hits from U2 to Johnny Cash (his favourite). After a couple of songs, I clapped politely and gave him a cigarette as a sign of appreciation but this was apparently perceived as an encore request. “What colour are your eyes?” He asked. As soon as I told him, I recognised what was coming. There is but one song I loathe more than ‘Come on Eileen’ and that is ‘Brown-eyed Girl’. Fortunately Liam read my faux sleeping and aversion of eye-contact as was intended and returned to Cash for his final number. This sort of carry-on would not usually sit well after an exhausting night shift but, completely unexpectedly, I realised it was just what I needed.

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