15 January 2004

This evening as I wandered through Central London I felt like I was stuck in the aftermath of some nasty, violent film.

I went with a friend to see The Wicker Woman at the Jermyn Street Theatre. I saw the show in Edinburgh last year, and enjoyed it muchly, so decided to go see it again. Until about 5 minutes before the show started, Kim and I must've been the youngest people in the audience by at least a decade. I also heard a disproportionate number of audience members talking to their friends and starting sentences with "I'm doing a show...." or "when I was in this performance" etc. Mind you, I was just as guilty... I turned to Kim and said "Do you remember when we took all that stuff to that gig to make emergency, last minute comedy props? Well, do you know what we did with it, because I can't find my safety pins, so tonight I've had to staple a bandage to my knee" (at which point I tried to roll my jeans up to demonstrate and ripped one of the staples out).

Afterwards we went for a drink in the pub me and some other friends ended up in after going to see The Rocky Horror Show when it was on in the West End in the summer. It felt weird going in there fully clothed, as last time I was dressed as Columbia, wearing shorts and an overly revealing sparkly top, and the landlord insisted on taking a photo of me surrounded by men in lab coats who were all excited about the fact the Jonathan Wilkes had signed them.

I walked with my friend to Piccadilly Circus station, and she pointed out that the statue of Eros had boardings around it in a similar fashion to in the film 28 Days Later (which I confess I haven't seen. Quite how I managed to pass a degree which was half Film Studies despite the fact that I've never seen anything is a miracle). On my way up Regent Street I noticed that there was a trail of blood along the pavement. I'm guessing from the large-ish puddle of blood not far from Cheers, the injured person had been walking in the opposite direction to me, and then finally stopped and/or collapsed.

This however wasn't isolated, as I saw another trail of dripped blood on Oxford Street, and some smatterings on the floor of the 82 bus I caught.

I was starting to wonder where these trails were leading me... would I find wild dogs devouring people when I alighted the bus in Golders Green? Was Christopher Lee trying to lure me somewhere? Was it some physicalised premonition and I'm going to accidentally cut my hand off this evening? (Maybe I'll leave the washing up, including sharp knives, until the morning).

If only I'd seen 28 Days Later, I'm sure it would've given me some inspiration for something vaguely humourous to say to finish this entry.

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