Almost Soho

Once the decision was made that we couldn't go on

and get into Soho, which like Brigadoon seemed

to have become an illusion with all roads closed

into the enclave due to the Lord Mayor's Show,

we would people watch, take photographs,

comment, sometimes waspishly,

on the passing scene.

I'd missed the meeting despite being in London a

good one and a half hours before starting time.

My stress levels were through the roof with

exasperation.

After an hour in static traffic on London Bridge,

with an effort the levels subsided and I

succumbed to sense, deciding to make the

best we could of the situation.

Looking beyond the cones and no entry signs,

we glimpsed portly men in antique uniforms

raggedly making their way back to wherever

their incongruous transport was parked.

Standing at a bus stop, an Air Cadet with

cymbals clasped under his armpit,

hands still white gloved and pristine,

making his way home.

Theatre and the prosaic meeting.

At 3.30pm as we waited in more grid locked

traffic, a figure lurched to a standstill, at a corner,

steadied himself and his can of Special Brew

against a wall, and surveyed the scene,

taking stock through eyes, that even at a

distance, looked unfocused.

It was a rubbery,Hogarthian countenance,

and equally booze soaked.

The camera clicked randomly and with

my usual abandon, hoping that out of

the indiscriminate might come something

interesting.

Like the figure sitting by the roadside,

hood up, eyeing passers by and, surprised,

acknowledging the lone donation dropped

onto his blanket.

In the viewer the figure was blurred,

all the focus on the outline of wing mirror

and car window sill.

I was going to discard it when No.1 son

stopped me and saw potential.

"Do we really see the homeless?"

The picture spoke and remained.

Stepping out of a taxi an African woman

stopped to look about her before ascending

a flight of stairs to her maisonette.

A cloud of silver tissue gracefully swathed,

folds draped, crisply angled at the shoulders,

a toque pleated into a cockade.

Lusciously exotic against a seedy,limp

background.

Another episode of gridlock gave me

the opportunity to snap boys on bikes,

casually gliding in decreasing circles,

then suddenly pirouetting,

with rising back wheels,

weaving in, out, of columns and

each other.

In an unchoreographed barn dance,

people advanced, retreated, with

suppressed hysteria into and out of

tube stations.

They sashayed out into the road making

for the safety of the isles at the base of

traffic lights.

Making shapes where real life lies.

Crawling in traffic gives time to look

down alleyways and glimpse

another London, and dimension,

behind the hi tech facades.