April 29th 2014 (Crystal Palace)
A Hells Angel on a black motorbike passes by the window. He is dressed in black, greasy denim. His hair is matted. There is a blanket rolled up tight on the front of the bike. He holds the handlebar in his left hand. In his right he holds the handlebar of another motorbike that freewheels alongside him. The second bike is chrome coloured. I watch him. As he passes over the empty crossroad he lets go of the chrome bike & it glides off across the street & crashes into a brick wall. He continues riding.
I am watching all of this from the window of an old house. The front garden is wild. After he has disappeared I leave the house. I am wondering if I could help myself to the crashed chrome bike. But, as I approach the bike (it is now laying beneath a hedge, partly hidden) I notice a gang of kids. They are fighting in the street. I want to avoid them, so I put my head down & walk past both them & the bike.
I’m in the forecourt of a garage. The gang of kids arrive shortly after me. They have stopped fighting & are very friendly to me. I ask one girl (Vicky W?) who the mysterious biker was. Her answer is vague & convoluted. I am none the wiser.
April 30th 2014
There is a new lecturer at university. He has an unusual way of communicating with the students. He begins a sentence in a whisper & ends it shouting! After some time he is red with rage & crying! I wonder how long he will last? Infact, many students are packing away their books & leaving the classroom as he teaches. Most of them offer excuses as they go through the door.
There is a framed picture on the wall behind the lecturer’s head. It is rather like a stain-glass window. It shows a typically English cobbled street from days gone by. A figure stands at the crest of the steep street. At the far end of the street stands Elvis Presley. He is dressed as a cowboy & he stands legs apart, hip thrown out, gun drawn. Behind him, facing the opposite direction is an exact twin of himself – but facing the other direction.
I notice a second picture on the wall. It is almost exactly the same as the first, except that the ‘second’ Elvis is seen to be climbing over a fence: one leg straddles the waist-height fence.
May 1st 2014
John Lydon is in Croydon. He is here to promote his new album &, no doubt, play at the Fairfield Halls. He sits on a low wall near the underpass on Wellesley Rd. A barber nervously cuts his hair. He gingerly picks up Lydon’s dreadlocks & snips at them. I walk over & say hello. He is quite approachable. The barber says to both Lydon & myself, “You two have met before.” Lydon seems suitably unimpressed. His locks collect around him on the pavement. I kick a couple around & then say goodbye. The barber looks down at the shorn hair & shakes his head. Lydon concentrates on remembering the words to his new songs.
nickreeves 