The sun shone down from the morning sky with a strength that threatened to make people believe summer had finally arrived. As I trotted down Kilburn Lane towards Queens Park tube station, I allowed myself to smile at the wonderfully bizarre situation that I had found myself in.
Harry had managed to convince me that it wouldn’t be long before he and I would be kicking back on a yacht somewhere, drinking martinis, laughing at the stories and jokes of the one and only, Michael Caine. Once we had made our way back from Soho the night before, we had spent hours YouTubing some of his most famous clips, doing our best to impersonate him but failing spectacularly. “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”
I passed though the barriers and down the steps to the platform. The prospect of travelling on the Underground for the next half an hour was not the most enticing of activities to be undertaking on the way into work, but today, given my buoyant mood, it didn’t matter to me. Instead, I saw it as an opportunity to admire the array of different people that I would be sharing my journey with.
Immediately, my eyes were drawn across the platform, seeking out the bizarre and the unusual. I wandered over to the coffee kiosk and fished a few pound coins from my pocket whilst admiring the age of the lady in front of me, doubled over her walking stick, stroking the whiskers on her chin. I contemplated reaching that grand age, wondering how difficult normal, everyday activities would be.
Then, the hugely obese man, wheezing his way down the steps that I had myself just bound down. Sweat patches stained his shirt, the efforts of his exertions clear for everybody to see. I look at people, but I don’t make judgements; not all the time anyway. I like to think about what these people do in their spare time, or what they had done, and often imagine that their hobbies would be surprising, given their external appearance.
Imagine, for instance, the old lady, stroking the whiskers on her chin, who had been a world famous chess player who had toured the world; played in front of crowds of thousands; won millions in prize money from International Chess World Cups; retired quietly in Queens Park. Or the hugely obese man, sweating steadily in the sunshine, who spends his weekends plane surfing at rich people’s parties, manoeuvring majestically through the clouds to the delight of the canapé-tasting gentry beneath him. Why not?!
The train rumbled to a halt in front of me, and my day dreams evaporated. I climbed aboard, coffee in hand, waiting patiently as the old lady minded the step. There wasn’t a seat, so I stood by the door, slurping away, nearly spilling boiling hot caffeine down my ironed, yet still crinkled shirt, every time the train arrived or departed a new station.
Eventually, we pulled into Piccadilly Circus, and I made to exit the train. As the doors opened, a sea of faces stood before me, all unique and special in their own certain way. As I stepped down, I couldn’t help but notice the brown eyes and the blue eyes, the crooked noses and the button noses, the red cheeks and redder cheeks, the monobrows and the plucked brows; a plethora of facial features.
Then I saw her. She wasn’t winking, but it was her.
Stunned, I managed to look down. Her pink dress, an island of colour in an otherwise grungy scene, shone up at me. I did my best to hide my stare, but I was unashamed, for this woman had been winking at me for a year and a half’s worth of authentic Italian sandwiches.
And what was more, she was looking at me. Not as you’d imagine, either, with a look of confusion and concern at the perverted invasion of personal space from this man’s stare, but with a look as if to say… well I don’t know. But something that was more than the way a stranger might acknowledge another stranger. She knew me.
She stepped past me and onto the carriage. The beepers beeped to signal the closing of the doors, and I turned to see where she was.
And she was right there, one hand holding the yellow pole in the middle of the carriage, one hand on her hip, all the while staring directly at me. As the doors closed and the train started to move away, our eyes locked. I stared. She winked.
The Warm Up 