Block Chop 99: Ice creams and metronomes

Today, the day of blog number 99, I saw a man eating an ice cream.  In the cold.  On the bus.  He was sitting on the seat in front of me just to the left, so his right ear was directly before my face.  I didn’t notice him getting on because I was enthralled by my book, but gradually the stuffiness and the early morning made me drowsy and I couldn’t focus any longer.  I put the book away, and settled back into my seat to try to snatch an uncomfortable bumpy doze.

First I glimpsed the ice cream cone been lapped in traditional seaside fashion.  “Gosh,” I thought.  “How untimely.”  He was dressed smartly, suited and booted in a long black heavy coat.  Of rather advanced years judging by his thinning hair in various shades of grey.  He was constantly shaking his head from side to side, repeating the compelled movement over and over, relentlessly, unstoppingly...  His coat showed flecks of dandruff on the shoulders, and his long lank hair was pulled into a sort of loose ponytail using 12 black hair pins (I counted them). 

My gaze followed his disgusting hair up his back and onto his scalp, and there I saw the bumpiest bump.  On the top of his head, towards the back and to the right, sat a massive perfectly round bump; much larger in size than a golf ball.  His long patchy hair was pulled tight over the bump like guy ropes from a tent.  The hair pins held down like tent pegs.  He continued the head shaking from side to side; the bump swung before my eyes, mesmerizing like a metronome.  The bump swinging tick tock tick tock, the ice cream licking lick lick, the dandruff falling... I fell asleep.

And when I awoke the odd ice cream bumpy-headed hair pin man was gone.  Where he goes, nobody knows.  He swooped away in his long coat, disappeared in a puff of dandruff, or quietly alighted the vehicle at one of the designated stops carefully ensuring not to distract the driver (and sleeping passengers) while doing so.

I continued my somnambulism throughout the remainder of the day, and continue it now as I write this.  I sleepwalked through the Blank Media meeting about the preparations for Blank Weekend festival, I sleepwalked through catching up with my emails, and I sleepwalked through the short stories and flash fiction submissions I am reading.  Don’t test me on what I agreed to, emailed or read as I’m certain I couldn’t tell you.  Fortunately sleep-steps can easily be retraced by looking in my diary, checking my sent folder, and reading the stories again; things I could be doing now if I wasn’t bashing out this ol’ blog bollocks.

Nightnight.

P.S.

I'm going to be in an exhibition of Frank Sidebottom fan art, and may be interviewed for the Big Issue about it.  Weird, eh!?  More about that later.

100 tomorrow, huzzah