OK well, I’m still banging on about ‘Nicholson’s Guide to the Ground’ – a project of
potentially infinite scope and duration.
I was in London for a few days last week; and you know, the stuff you find on the ground in London does seem more interesting and curious than the stuff you find on the ground elsewhere.
Some of the stuff is not necessarily surprising - it may just be litter – but most litter isn’t quite as eye-catching as this package of ‘Sliming’ Herbs, found on the pavement in Leytonstone. (That's one for the archive).
But other things are more mysterious. Yes, I can imagine circumstances in which I might abandon my socks while out for a walk but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t just leave them lying on the pavement, like these near Leicester Square:
And what exactly is the story behind this mysterious pair of crutches left in Oxford Street. To be fair they’d been left next to a waste bin which could be construed as an attempt to be tidy.
But it so happened that immediately after I’d taken that picture above, the man who empties the bins came along and asked me suspiciously, ‘Are these yours?’
I thought of one or two smart replies involving miracle cures but thought it best to play it straight, and said no they weren’t mine and I think he believed me. And we both said they looked brand new. Who throws a way a brand new pair of crutches, we asked each other? We didn’t have an answer.
But I was reminded of a book I used to look at in my catholic grandma’s house when I was a kid. The book was about Lourdes the scene of any number of miracle cures, and a place where a great many crutches were abandoned, like this:
And on the ground in Walthamstow – a pro-bee graffito (I think that’s the word even though it’s on the ground).
