RANDOM ECHOES 11/10/05

Countdown - day 3 (3 to go)

The household items I'm putting out on the street in the process of moving are contributing to the economy of night-time scavengers - that strange breed (not exclusive to London) halfway between tramp and poverty stricken opportunist. I watch two quite different examples last night, around 8pm. Dickensian mist hanging round the street lamps, a broken down bus at a stop further along the road - troops of passengers standing silhouette in the shadows and cursing their bad luck. Then the first scavenger appears, literally out of nowhere (for a moment I wonder if he hasn't just come up through a manhole), an expected example perhaps. He is in his mid-forties and wears baggy, ill fitting and dirty beige tracksuit trousers with a natty black sweatshirt; his bald crown is capped on either side by thin springy curls, almost blond. He watches the street avidly, seeming afraid of being spotted or else embarrassed. And he mutters inaudibly. First he toes a couple of cardboard boxes outside the taxi booth and the tiny jerk chicken shop, but there is nothing that interests him there. Passing me, he eyes my rucksack then opens a polystyrene burger carton with nothing more than a few scrapes of ketchup inside. After that he heads for the next mound of refuse left outside the flats for next day's collection. He picks up a stack of VHS video tapes, some with the tape hanging loose; he picks through them reading the labels then puts them back and they collapse, strewn across the pavement. Muttering wildly again he retreats and heads back on himself having found nothing of any worth to him. A Nigerian woman dressed pretty smartly, parks up in her VW Golf (second hand?) and wanders quickly over to the same pile of things and pulls out a microwave oven, it's cord hanging loose and with the plug removed. She holds it at arms length as if it might snap at her or be full of some unidentifiable matter, she sniffs at it, she opens and closes the door, looks inside and then bundles it off into the boot of the car and away she goes. It's a recycled economy to a degree, somewhat seedy and grim, but it appears to reduce waste. I find it both gratifying and sad at the same time.

Down by the river I spotted some people walking all over the world - they were surprisingly respectful, even took their shoes and socks off.

The Dixie Queen left her moorings at 6.50pm. A crowd gathered to watch her depart. The little boys watching with their parents, they asked what it was doing as it stopped midstream and performed an elegant smooth 360 degree turn, blowing its call and heading downriver toward Canary Wharf. It was a fine performance. However, the steamer looked precarious and fragile as it entered the shipping channel and moved away. I expected to hear bad news the next day. Fortunately, it did not come and this morning Dixie Queen was back, tethered to the mooring barge, rocking gently.

In recent days Virgil didn't want to listen to his portable digital jukebox as usual when walking around the city. He wanted final access to its sounds, to let them leave an imprint on his nervous system before he departed. A walking audio blotter soaking each nuance up, letting it reflect inside. All the things he'd despised now became fragile and dear through impermanence: the constant traffic decibel attack, the tap tap of bicycle pedals pulling up behind him on the pavement, the ricochet of a ship's horn bouncing off Tower Bridge and Butler's Wharf, the babble of thousands of mobile phone conversations taking place on the hoof. The stream. The oaths and curses of the mad people and the sane (?) ones. The winding of cranes. The lull of a faucet running. The bullying cormorant calling. The bubble of the coffee pot at 7.35am.