Bank holiday barmy-ness…

D

A bit late, but nevertheless…

So, it's May Bank Holiday Weekend! I spent last year's May bank holiday in rural Berkshire, attending a May Fair that involved pig racing, yummy barbeque and more varieties of fudge than I had ever seen in my life. This May, I'm in London and you might say that the differences are noticeable. While in the country-side, three day weekends present an opportunity to place bets on swine or to frolic about in the great outdoors with family and friends, it seems to inspire a great deal of lunacy in the metropolis. As evidence, I offer last night's events, arranged chronologically:

• 8.30pm: Paul and I are playing our first game of Scrabble since my return to the UK. Suddenly, the noise of a helicopter drowns out the Beck album we are listening to. A glance out the window that the helicopter is of a police nature, hovering over a house on the street perpendicular to ours.
  
• 9.00pm: Deciding to brave the great outdoors in search of Indian food, we unfortunately need to go in the direction of Perpendicular Road. We discover it is closed off with police tape for two blocks south of its intersection with Our Street. Policemen stand guard on the corner and swarm around what we assume is Alleged Crack House or similar.
  
• 9.05pm: Having found another route to the Main Road, upon which the curry house is located, we are distracted by yet another horde of police and perps, sorting out the aftermath of what appears to be a dogfight conducted outside an estate agents.
  
• 9.06pm: Taking advantage of the police preoccupation with Alleged Crack House and Dogfight Aftermath, a youth on a BMX bike goes tearing down the street with another (seemingly stolen) bike in tow.
  
• 9.07pm: A driver pulling out a parking space connects with another car as bike boy whizzes around the corner, then reemerges a few minutes later with a different (also seemingly stolen) bike.
  

By this point we'd arrived at the curry house of our choice, only to find a waiter standing confusedly in the doorway, staring up and down the street and clearly wondering how and why his restaurant suddenly came to be located on the dodgiest road in West London.

Oh for the pastoral days of racing pigs and fifty flavors of homemade fudge…