Uh Oh. Well That's Me Karmically, Erm, Phucked.

Whoopsy daisies.

Something you have to understand before I carry on, is there were a LOT of just plain insane people in London. That's one of the first things I learnt. Maybe there's something in the water, maybe it's the permanent overcast-ness, I dunno. But when you travel around this place you are always going to see somebody nuts.
Guaranteed.

On a bus there'll be some old biddy mumbling to herself and smelling of old mayonnaise. Take the Tube any time of day and you're guaranteed to find some loony rambling on about God, Jam and Hector, the Tamer of Horses.
Seriously, I've seen people so round the twist their fantasies deserve their own capital letters.

The point I'm trying to make at the end of the day is, with so many chessboards minus a bishop, you're bound to get immune to it, and brush it off as part of your everyday life. It's like stepping in a turd. It's not pleasant, you wouldn't want to do it on purpose, but when it happens you wipe it off, carry on, and hope the smell doesn't stick around and cause trouble.

With this in mind, I'll actually get to the point.

I was out doing a site inspection about a week before I left London to come back home, minding my own business, just sort of tootling along with a map in one hand and not much of anything in the other, when I came to a zebra crossing.
This wasn't the strange bit.
The strange bit happened when I crossed said crossing and got the other side.

Because I was in a bit of a dawdle and not paying much attention, I barely even noticed the woman until she was pretty much underfoot. She just walked straight up to me, stopped right in front of me, and looked me in the eye.

This was not a pleasant experience.
I'm not age-ist, but this lady was OLD. She had the lined, leathery face of Nanny Ogg, hair in places most people don't even have places, and these rheumy, egg-white eyes with the blackest pupils you've ever seen. These holes were so deep, formless and devoid of any life, it would've given a fish vertigo. Not only was her face fossilised enough to give me a serious case of the willies, but she was dressed in these old, mouldy black robes; a scattered, threadbare collection of drapes, carpets and the occasional unlucky ferret.

This old biddy was plain old scary, in a scary old person kind of way. And do you know what she did?

She looks at me with those past-sell-by eyes of hers, and says in the croakiest, Grudge-type cackle-moan voice "Wheelyertack mycrooster odeplee ..."

This voice would've stripped the paint off the walls, and fair enough stripped me of any kind of bladder control. It was old, it was ancient, it was tinged with the smell of a cat's bum, and it was aimed it me.

I panicked. Not a chance was I sticking around for this, so I just looked at her, shirked back, and said loudly "Yeah sure! Whatever lady." And walked off. I mean, what? Was I supposed to stay and listen to some crazy old lady? Screw that.

It was only as I was about 50 metres away, still walking fast, that I figured out what this woman was trying to say. I figured it out at the exact moment a big-ass delivery van came skidding to a stop and nearly squished her flat as she hobbled over the crossing...


"Will you help me across the road please?" She'd said.


Hmmm.

Oops.