Hell and Angel

We went to the N1 Centre, a mall near Angel Islington. This involved a ride on London’s double decker buses. I’d read in the paper how someone had driven under a low bridge in one of those and decapitated the bus, hurting loads of people. Not sure if anyone died. For this reason, I insisted we sit on the bottom half of the bus.

We were just turning onto Upper Street when a man jumped out in front of the bus and put his arms out like he thought he could make himself look big. The driver had plenty of time to stop because he wasn’t going very fast. The driver jumped off the bus to deal with him. I couldn’t really hear what the issue was, but the man wore a big tan winter coat even though it’s May. He was probably a loony. I heard him shout something about his wife. The only thing I can work out is that this bus driver had slept with the man’s wife and this man had been sitting here, waiting all day for this bus to come by so he could beat him up. It didn’t work very well. After one blow to the driver’s head, the driver had him in a headlock and pressed his face to the curb. At this point, I tugged on Burbank’s jacket to signal to him that we’d better get off here and walk the rest of the way. It must have been National Transportation from Hell day in London. That’s all I can figure.

It wasn’t far to the mall. It was a pretty walk, too, looking at all the little shops and restaurants. London has a lot of Italian restaurants, I guess because they’re so close to Italy, at least compared to New York, which has its fair share of pizzerias at that. Eventually we got to someplace called Islington Green, which had a big statue and some park benches in a little triangle. Across the street from that was the mall.

This was a cool mall, not so much because of the shops in it but because of the decoration—giant steel wings and a halo at the entrance and exit. Reminds me of some of Burbank’s sculpture work. There’s a two-story Borders in the mall. They only had one copy of my book. When I expressed my need for more copies, they asked me if I’d like to order more so many times that I eventually left the store without buying anything.