I’ve been meaning to confront this big bloke who works in the same office building as me. But when an opportunity presented itself in the photocopier room, I chickened out. When I say big, I mean so big that when he bends over, it feels like I’m standing under a basketball net. In fact, I’m sure he’s a giant and I’ve started writing his back-story. Born in 1834, he spent his youth roaming the Ukraine, surviving on a diet of lost sepoys and local peasants, although his tale becomes a little dull when he moves to Denmark and starts working for a finance publication.
Anyhow, my quibble is a small one, but one I envisaged having a bit of fun with – preferably with an audience, for laughs and just in case things turn violent. Quite simply, this rather large man left me waiting at a T junction for five seconds longer than necessary because he failed to indicate from his (presumably reinforced) bicycle. That’s it: nothing really. But how often is the person you’re inwardly cursing on the street somebody you can later rebuke for their actions?
Still, there are worse cycling crimes. I can’t stand the sticklers who blindly follow the rules, not questioning why they exist in the first place. Like when people perform Nazi salutes to stop (I’m guessing this one dates back to the 1940s). What’s the point of indicating you’re going to slow down after you’ve already slowed down? It’s mirror, signal, manoeuvre, not manoeuvre, signal, act outraged when someone does their best to clip you with their Christiania bike. And while it’s true you note the drop in speed, you can’t help questioning whether it’s one of these rather bizarre people who cycles in bursts: frenetic pedalling with raised bum, freewheeling, frenetic pedalling – like they’re whipping a horse or something.
These people are everywhere, and no doubt represented in People, a new performance about the human condition by EKKO debuting this week. If it can command the kind of interest that Tom Noddy’s Bubble Show at Experimentarium draws every January, it will be very happy indeed, or the Wallmans circus dinner show, which has been packing them in since 2004.
It’s got it all: acrobats, trapeze, tightrope walkers, but sadly no giants.
