framed, cries, slow

This strange image appears on the wall of one of the towers supporting Charing Cross railway bridge. It seems to have several levels of significance. At one it is an angel; at a another a human crow. I like the way it seems to be escaping from the frame provided by the architects of the bridge, and pondering the spikes erected by those who want to protect the bridge from marauders.

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In Oxford Street, the brakes of the bus on which we are travelling scream and groan as though driven mad by pedestrians and shop windows. They remind me of the agonised wailing of the hydraulic bin lifting device on the Council rubbish removal vehicle which was at work outside our house as we left home this morning. The Christmas lights,which come on in the early afternoon in Oxford Street and Regent Street, do little, this afternoon, to relieve the apparent pain suffered by the machines which labour without thought or reward.

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It is difficult, but satisfying to walk cross the road at traffic lights slowly and with dignity to the sound of the impatient bleeping which is supposed to hurry pedestrians on. I feel sorry for people, older and even less agile than I, who hobble across the road as though whipped by the insidious bleeps, their sticks trembling and tapping in front them. In response to the bleeps I walk twice as slowly as I normally would, and smile at the drivers crouched like jockeys over their steering wheels.