London

The theatre that became home

Thursday 14
Waking up is a big surprise. In New York I hadn’t slept at all on the first night, or for many nights thereafter. Even then it was never sleep, sleep. So while I feel relieved and a little excited to have survived my first night in London, to have slept even, I wake up exhausted and already sore.

I sit dozing in and out of sleep on Trafalgar Square at 7am. I watch as two people feed pigeons from big sacks. It seems like madness to me, this pigeon feeding. Going by the behaviour of the pigeons it seems like madness to them too. They swoop and dive and swirl in great packs, like something from Patrick Neate’s London Pigeon Wars. Feature continues

A man approaches the pigeon feeders and says something. One feeder turns to the other, “I don’t understand what he’s saying, do you speak any Russian?”

I don’t speak any Russian either, but going by the young man’s incredulous expression at the sight of two people feeding pigeons on a mass scale, I am pretty sure I could, with some accuracy, translate his meaning, if not his actual words.

In fear of being shat on I get up and walk towards Soho Square. I while away most of the day dozing on a bench.

Down on the Strand at 11pm a homeless crowd stands waiting for a scheduled food drop.

One homeless man looks at me as I shuffle on my feet. “It will be here,” he says. “They’re just running late.”

The man, I am guessing mid-forties wearing a lumberjack shirt over a grey T-shirt, seems friendly and talkative. His name is Michael. He doesn’t flinch when I tell him about my project. Instead he asks where I slept last night.

“Look,” he says. “I am sleeping near hear in a theatre doorway, there’s a few of us there, but the guy who has the middle doorway is away, he’s gone to Basingstoke for three weeks, you can take his space if you like?”