‘Better than a movie.’ Applied to the bus ride along Green Lanes. I like to recommend this exoteric venture to new-coming tourists: top deck, front seat, feet up, snug; the Number 29 ex Wood Green to Trafalgar Square. Any time of day. Pageant pantomimic surreal unwindings before your very eyes.
  Two black men picky punching at our second short stop. The sober younger one reluctantly flattening the older staggering swiping sot, kept on rising and swivel swinging, begging any audience intervention. Pausing passersby casually halt the half hostilities. Not around here! Have to imagine upper inner-Londoner under-reactions, scuttling fearful, Mind your own bees. Three stops on gets jeering gangsters golly gangling, Somalian pre-teens wafting planks of flabby fencing, too-heavy bricks plonking only ten feet – the worst rioters ever – needing more work on that upper body strength. As one loose lot fanny flip-flapped away, overlarge hands, oversized shoes, overhead caps dancing down the alley, laughing teeth and eyes dart dashing as sirens shimmied closing hot. Then a lumpy bashed biddy with her tight packed pram, tucked-in baby, or maybe not? Beset by Nigerian store detectives mutter important into walkie-talkies, shrugging, just doing, the old old story. She shouting pointing the pale white finger refusing arrest from a bad black man. I was born in this country. Is her line of defence. Unable to conjure over outrage; resigned but determined to crabby create, on her next way out of circulation. Further on, passing the Ladder, where an Irish nurse had advised to purchase. ‘Get on the ladder’, a saucy quip. But in ten short years these base brick terraces had doubled in value. The prescient lady, ginger underneath and blonde on top, made a cosy killing and relocated to Brisbane, mortgage-free. An ethnic bakery episode embroiling; causing traffic to jam jar jolly with too-wide vans parked both beside; as silk tunicked gypsoid cocksure characters argue animatedly angry Arabic, struggling to fit an over-large item in a too-small space. The wedding cake white, with silver gold trappings – itchy embellished with animals, birds, angels, abstractions, no wasted spaces – is my favoured way, of plenty going on, boredom averted. By tiny sketchings of men misbehaving in Mad Magazine’s amazing margins. Stanley Spenser byzantine busy, renditions of Brueghel bumbling genera – see the shapes, the stories, substances. Laid on your bed lost for hours till a moany mother confiscated the complete Bosch poster manual. You’ll ruin your eyes. She’d also barked when banning that kaleidoscope from the breakfast table. Carried it everywhere, afraid to miss out – what if the next was the prettiest EVER? Psychedelic phantasmagoria, cool configurations, realities inverted, reversed, negated. Here with Zingara paisley parents weaving worry for hundreds of pounds’ worth of spoiling confectionary. Houri in turquoise-magenta veils, pearly ropes of balls and bells, flowing strands of beaten gold discs; shouting orders, recriminations. Men in orange, cerise trimmed tassels, red-eyed sullen, slinky Oriental. While dynastic aggravations, Who’s to blame? Fingers pointing. Two dogs scrapping towards the cake are booted skywards, still snarl snapping, slow-motion sailing through the anti-atmosphere. Costumed brats with the London valence hiding in doorways, deflecting the eyes of captivated passengers drinking it in. Could’ve stayed all day as the bus shuddered off, waved away by a scarlet sashed Saracen.
  Our epilogue, dénouement – after the tour. To register responses. The returning traveller who smiles appreciation is deemed okay – you’ve passed the test. If they come back whining, devil down-mouthing of dark destitution… direst dangers… never again... You know you are dealing with... a wanker.