We should be proud of the fact that we live in a city where you can walk around dressed as a clown or a skeleton or a monkey and no one really cares.
But despite this relative indifference to things like seeing someone wandering up the Kingsland Road wearing a cape and carrying a boombox, or getting on the tube dressed as a panda, even London has its limits of what is acceptable and what isn’t.
And friends, there are some things you should never do when walking around London.
There’s some really odd stuff sitting on the top of London’s bus stops.
When you get the bus as much as I do, you start to wonder who puts them there.
As far as prerequisites go, they’d have to be tall, carry a step ladder around, or have a mate who doesn’t mind having someone stand on their shoulders while they hoist a lampshade onto the roof. In the dark.
Outside Beyond Retro in Dalston there used to be a typewriter on the bus shelter. At another one on Kingsland Road, a pair of DM style boots. All over east London into the city, you’ll find neon potatoes with cotton buds sticking out of them, placed there for the purposes of art and, I’m guessing, the entertainment of commuters on the top deck of the 243.
And on Essex Road yesterday?
A toaster.
Luckily for you I’m not going to start a new blog called “Weird Stuff on Top of Bus Stops” because that would be boring and a pretty niche way to spend an evening.
But if you choose to set up that blog, you won’t be short of stuff to put on it.
The Overground is fast becoming my new favourite way to get around.
Sometimes you get on and there’ll be loads of dogs, other times you’ll be kept happy by the nice views of London, and occasionally you might even see the odd marriage proposal.
And other times you get on the Overground and see someone on their way to play hockey on a UNICYCLE.
Yeah. You heard.
Does this count as stalking?
The unicycle / hockey stick combo made me a bit curious, because while unicyclists are kind of par for the course around London these days – sort of – you don’t often see them on the tube, and the idea of riding one while wielding a large stick seemed like the last word in multitasking.
And I’m not going to lie, I was impressed.
Then this bloke was joined by another one, and I realised hockeying on a unicycle was in no way a solo pursuit.
So when I got home I Googled it, and apparently this is a real thing. There’s a league and everything (they shorten it to LUNIs. The website did not confirm whether this was a play on the word “looneys”, but I suspect it played a part).
Unicycle. Hockey stick. Banana skin.
This recent discovery is not only symbolic of the weird, wonderful and casually out-of-the-ordinary stuff that goes on in London on a day-to-day basis…
…but it also means that the next time you feel pleased with yourself for getting down the gym, or doing a particularly impressive downwards dog in yoga, you’ll probably think:
Somewhere in Hackney tonight, there are people riding unicycles and playing hockey at the same time.
