A Filipino woman is singing karaoke by a street planter. She has all the gear – a portable speaker and mic, a tripod for her iPhone, a camping chair. She’s dressed in tight purple lycra trousers and a gilet top, and her hair is sensibly tied back at the nape of her neck. She’s singing The Wind Beneath My Wings, leaning into the notes, tilting her head back and throwing her free hand wide. Everyone ignores her – until a glitch on the sound system makes a terrible grating sound and everyone flinches. She carries on singing, a true pro.
A man buys a bottle of toilet duck in B&M. He puts it on the conveyor belt and watches it slide towards the woman on the till, who also watches it. It looks so isolated there on the belt it seems to stand for something. The woman lets it come on, then stops it – no doubt by stamping on a button on the floor. The man looks at her and smiles; the woman doesn’t break eye contact with the duck.
‘One pound fifty,’ she says, swiping it through.
‘Hardly seems worth it,’ he says.
She blinks, slowly.
‘Receipt?’
‘No. Thanks.’
He takes his toilet duck and carries it outside. Stands in the bright morning sunshine, cradling it for a while. Then slips it in his bag.
A jazz guitarist is busking outside a shoe shop. He has a strange, double-necked electric guitar. He plays intricate base and rhythm notes with his right hand whilst his left taps across the wide fretboards like a hyperactive spider. Dressed in baggy sequin trousers and a fancy embroidered waistcoat, his expression is one of complete boredom. Like a court musician from a fairytale who’s been cursed to play in a strange new world of shoe shops and street drinkers. A woman comes up to speak with him but he doesn’t stop playing. He will never stop playing. Even when he sleeps he plays, one hand hanging outside the bed, running scales, playing jazz.
A woman is crouching beside an inert street drinker, lying on the pavement outside Superdrug. A small crowd has gathered to watch, either thrilled by her good samaritan act, or just morbidly curious to know what happens next. The woman is wearing a white blouse and scarlet slacks. She looks like she’s on her lunch break. If that’s true it makes the whole scene doubly surprising; if she works locally, she must know you can see a dozen street drinkers sprawled on the pavement, on benches or in doorways, any time or day of the week. For whatever reason (she found god? had a dream?) the woman is crouching by this figure and shaking him gently by the shoulder.
‘What’s the matter?’ she says. ‘Are you alright?’
After appearing dead for a few minutes, the man rolls over, groans, swats the air between them.
I carry on into Superdrug to buy some Tea Tree Spot Gel.
When I come out, the woman and the crowd have gone. The street drinker is sitting up, pulling a can out of his pocket. The noise when he opens it: Skerrplock!
There’s another street drinker sitting against a wall on the approach to St Johns shopping centre. He looks like a cosplay Captain Birdseye, with a sailor’s cap and bushy white beard. I glance down at him as I pass. He puts a thumb up to me and sights along the line of it, saying: ‘God Bless ‘ee, sir! You have a lovely day, y’hear?’
‘Thanks!’ I say. ‘You too.’
I feel very brave and ‘street’.
I don’t give him any money.
There’s an elderly guy formerly dressed in a grey three piece suit, his bald pate fringed with a wild splurge of grey hair, standing outside a boarded-up shop. The ranting noise I’d heard as I walked along turns out to be him. He’s holding a crappy microphone and speaking too closely into it, distorting what he says so it’s difficult to make out. Something about the Gospels? A choice to be made?
Suddenly a woman steps in front of me. She looks, by her dress and demeanour to be something to do with the guy. They’re on a mission to save souls. His job’s to preach, hers is to reach (with a leaflet).
‘Take this!’ she says to me, smiling. ‘You might find it interesting.’
‘Thanks!’ I say, in exactly the same voice I used with Captain Birdseye.
It’s like I’ve taken a vow.
I put the leaflet in my back pocket.
I wonder if she notices, and wonders how long I’ll leave it before I take it out and drop it in a bin.
But it stays in my pocket all the way home. After I’ve unpacked the toilet duck and the spot cream, I make a cup of tea and settle down to have a look.
It’s glossy, no bigger than my hand, folded in a triptych. The front is black, the blue curve of the Earth at the bottom, the space above it crowded with mathematical formulas and diagrams. The heading is ‘Accident or Design?’ in bold white lettering; the author, Professor Something or Other, at the bottom. In fact the whole leaflet is black, with emphatic white text that asks the question ‘How did we get here?’ and goes on to say that it surely can’t be accident, the bible is proof of God, the dinosaurs were fake, miracles are real, Jesus turned water into wine and so on. Apparently, 2000 years ago Jesus was supernaturally born of a virgin, and lived without doing wrong OF ANY KIND. Then God gave him up as a sacrifice for the sins of others, which you’d have to think hasn’t worked. It seems like a waste.
And another thing: Why put Mary through an immaculate birth? If your magic is that strong, why not simply land Him on Earth in a blaze of wonder? It would’ve spared her blushes and made everything much more straightforward, like aliens landing and saying hi rather than zooming about in deserted forests being mysterious and probing farmers and so on. Why not announce your divine premiership with dramatic flair (which – according to the Bible – He has done many times before). Something with a bit more tact and sensitivity than a virgin birth. What was Mary supposed to do with that information?
Still, the man in the grey suit might say, these things shouldn’t be taken at face value. We need to reach with blind faith to the great mystery beyond. But according to this leaflet. Professor Something or Other seems pretty sure about things, in a black and white, professorial way. The Prof says dinosaurs were fake. God is the creator. And that’s why he’s ranting with a bad microphone in the shopping mall, and that’s why the woman gave me this leaflet.
‘You might find it interesting,’ she’d said.
True.
