Sunday 16 January 2011

Neighbourhood events

Late afternoon on a 341 to the supermarket. As we turn into Glover Drive, home of Tescos and Ikea, one of a pair of girls (who on closer inspection do appear to be overdressed for a trip to buy furniture or household supplies) asks if this bus is going to Angel. I manage to suppress the chortle forming in my throat and tell them this is Angel Road Superstores not Angel (good for going out with it's plethora of pubs, eateries and nightclubs). Indignant, she says but it says Angel on the front. Personally I would have thought the feeling of it not being the right direction would have started dawning before the end stop as the bus travelled further into deepest Tottenham or even as it passed Manor House tube. The confusion of London. They had along journey ahead of themselves back to civilisation.

On the way home, getting off the bus, a dramatic car crash had just happened. A woman stood on the side of the road hugging herself against the cold in orange fluffy slippers and a teeshirt, curtains twitched in the flats opposite, bystanders ogled. The car had careened headlong into the safety barriers by the pedestrian crossing. As I got closer there was an arc of broken glass strewn over the pavement on the other side of the road, possibly the car went out of control before swinging across the road into the barriers. There was nobody in the car. A helpful bystander told me they all jumped out and ran away. Stolen car seemed to be the general hypothesis. An ambulance arrived as I turned down my street - wasted trip...

On my way out today the street was full of parked cars - Tottenham playing at home - a red jaguar searching for a spot pulled in to let an oncoming car pass scraping the back end of a parked vehicle. A man in grey sweat pants recorded the red jag's numberplate and inspected the damage. He scraped it didn't he - we conflabbed. Neighbourly I thought.

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