We caught the train from Richmond to Hackney but arrived in Dalston two stops away. The train wouldn’t go any further.  Most of the passengers were in unfamiliar territory.  The rain was cold and the wind  slanted waiting to lash us the moment we  stepped out of the station like a bully.  London was dark and vicious. 

The traffic on Kingsland High street growled it’s way onwards. And across the road was the rail replacement bus.  The passengers  poured out into the street. Umbrellas flipped up.  The Journalist was t slightly ahead of me.   Then the screech of  the tyrses and the collective scream of the crowd. A man had walked into the pathway of a double decker London bus.

He flew into the air. The Journalist saw it all.  The driver couldn’t take his hands from the wheel of the now stationary  double decker bus.  The rain hissed as if water on a hotplate.  The man lay on the floor sleeping.  He was wearing a large brown coat. He looked like a deer shot in mid run.

The large glass window at the front of the bus was smashed. It looked like a spiders web glinting with dew.  The shocked drivers face splintered into an hundred shocked faces.  The Journalist turned and fell into my open arms in tears and buried her head in my chest.  This is a sign. I must live each day in my life in like it were my last, because one day it will be.