I was back on my bike for the first time since before Edinburgh today, traveling down to Hammersmith, then up to Ladbroke Grove and back home again. I was conscious all the time of having written yesterday that I could be run over by a bus today and how much you would all laugh with glee if fate couldn't resist the temptation to splatter me all over a road somewhere. And as always there were plenty of opportunities for collisions - more than usual if anything, but somehow I remained unscathed by the drivers who hadn't noticed me at junctions, or the bus drivers that weren't checking their passenger side wing mirrors as I came up the inside or indeed my own stupid decision to try and correct a mistake at a roundabout and heading across two busy lanes hoping for the best.
Even as I thought I was safe, about to turn into my road and thinking, "Hey I can write about how I came away unscathed on Warming Up" a car started reversing towards me. The fact that I was more conscious of dangers today probably actually saved me from injury or death. I was on the constant look out for the Grim Reaper and managed to dodge him, not being able to face the humiliation of everyone laughing at me for having my own projection of the future come true. So bad luck fate, you didn't get me! You're going to have to try a lot harder to kill me. I am way too wily. Come on, do your worst!
There's no way that I will be killed.
I spent a lot of this afternoon wandering around the shopping centre and drinking coffee and basically avoiding work, despite my claims that I was conscious of the clock ticking down and need to get on. I started wondering who all these people were who weren't at work on a Thursday afternoon. There's loads of old people around, who of course don't need to go to work (though they still could, the lazy bastards), but there were hundreds of others who like me, look like they should be at work, but aren't. Of course working patterns have changed and not everyone works 9 to 5 and some people are sadly unemployed. Or maybe they're just all self-employed writer/comedians who know they can get away with it. It was the first time for ages that I have remembered what a skive my job is and felt slightly boyishly naughty for hanging round the shops whilst the majority of the country were chained to their desks or work stations.
Part of my job is to observe and to contemplate, so of course I was working all the time, but it was another reminder of how lucky I am to be my own boss. There's still a little bit of the 22 year old me expecting the whole thing to come crashing down and waiting for someone to discover the fact that I am just a chancer getting away with stuff and of the teenage me who still believes that a job isn't a job unless you're in a place of business having a miserable time. But who were these other chancers and what were their stories? Were they feeling like naughty skiving schoolchildren as well?
Anyway I will write about something more interesting tomorrow. Because there is no way that I am going to die in the interim. I will definitely live for another 24 hours. Come on fate. How much temptation do you need?
