Tuesday, May 18, 2010

One thing I love about where I live, is that if you walk away from my house for about twenty minutes in the right directions, you'd think you were in the middle of the countryside, not eight miles from the centre of London.
One thing I don't like about where I live, is sometimes bumping into escaped fruitloops from the local Centre for the Emotionally Interesting.
I have plenty of other likes and dislikes, many of the latter are far worse than the occasional 'disturbed' person wandering around my garden trying to find a chemist, but sometimes the escapees can be rather entertaining; like the one I saw yesterday for example.

I was on my way back home from the shop and was merrily walking along pulling my little shopping trolley behind me, and had just got to the top of my road when I spotted what I thought at first sight to be a load of bags dumped on the other side of the road.
Being curious about such things, I crossed over to check the stuff out and it was only then I realized that they belonged to a chap who was washing his car by the kerb. I'd seen him in passing many times and so I said 'Hello' and was about to cross back over when another bloke walking towards us caught my attention.
Now, normally I wouldn't think twice about seeing a fairly mundane looking bloke wearing a tracksuit walking along the road, but the fact that he'd dropped his tracksuit bottoms to his ankles to reveal his genitalia and had begun to shout out "I's waving my penis at traffic"" rather loudly made me stop walking and stare at him while my brain froze and my jaw hit the ground.
It was the sound of some nearby children screaming as they ran away to the sanctuary of the nearby flats that brought me back from my stunned stupor, and I turned to the man washing his car in astonishment.
The man washing his car looked at me before we both turned to look at the half-naked man again. For a few seconds we both didn't know what to think or do, and there was no-one else around to help us make up our minds, so again we continued to watch in disbelief as the man carried on waving his penis at traffic, even though the only traffic nearby was parked and had no persons in any of the vehicles.
It was a very surreal moment and it was only when the car-wash man asked me if I thought calling the police would be a good idea did I mentally wake up.
I relied that yes, calling the Old Bill would be a most sensible idea and so he did.
The police must have been told that one of the inmates had broken out, as it only took about three minutes for them to turn up and I spent that time making sure none of the children from the flats came out in case they saw Mr Penis, and the car-wash man kept an eye on the semi-clad loony in case he ran away, or did something even weirder.
But run away he did not, and while we waited the nutter carried on standing at the side of the road, still with his kecks around his ankles and shouting "I's waving my penis at traffic!" all the time.
When the rozzers arrived, they walked up to him and as soon as he saw them he gave a couple of very eerie screams that sounded like a horror film SFX of an old woman howling before very peacefully being led away to the car, still with his tracky-bottoms round his ankles, and getting in.
As they went, the cops gave us both a 'thank you' and we stood there, still rather stunned as the car drove off onto the sunset.
We then said goodbye to each other, and I carried on my journey dragging my little trolley behind me as the man began to rinse the soap off his car.
The dictionary definition of where I live, is 'Lunatic Asylum'.
It doesn't surprize me in the least.