On about Tuesday this week someone dumped a large crusty white loaf by a wall at the top of my road. It remained there untouched and unmoved, perhaps not surprisingly: it had been raining and the wall is one that drunk men traditionally enjoy weeing against and as crusty and delicious as the loaf looked, you'd have to really like bread or be extremely hungry to eat it. But maybe it says something about the Hammersmith and Fulham council that nothing has got cleaned away (I don't think they ever cleaned away that
tramp shit, though it had vanished through natural processes by the time I got back from Edinburgh.
A day later as the bread had already begun to decay, someone was sick right next to it. I don't know if they had tried to eat the bread or just become nauseated by looking at it or it was just a coincidence that one of the many "Christmas" revelers had chucked their guts at this spot. Perhaps out of respect for the bread they had aimed their spew to the side, missing it almost entirely.
But for the rest of the week as I have come home at night I have had the interesting experience of watching the bread, and then the bread and the vomit, gradually decay and putrefy. It's got the strange sensation of one of those films where using time release cameras they show the speeded up growth of a flower or decomposition of an animal or whatever, but a bit slow, jumpy and rubbish. It's actually amazing what a loaf of bread will turn into when left outside on a rainy week. It would be hard to recognise it as bread now, especially with the sick beside it, it's just a load of white globules, but it's a fascinating look into decay and I wish I had a child as it would be like a kind of scientific project. Maybe Hammershit and Fulham are leaving stuff on the streets as a kind of educational departure, meaning they don't have to put any money into the schools either. Shepherd's Bush is brilliant and anyone who says it isn't is lying as usual.
