Confusion at Carfax

 In Oxford, outside the Old Tom pub, and I walk past Professor Ronald and what might be his carer or, potentially, a lady-friend. I forget his name. He's in a low-key outfit, his urban street-style, just tweeds, no deerstalker or Inverness cape, and he's whirling around, pointing at the pub, clearly declaiming on the subject. I remember Ronald. I have his book "The Witch" on my shelf. Ronald. Professor Ronald. Ron. He's cropped up on DVD extras for decades. He's a Timewatch veteran. Anything witchy, folklorey, halloweeny or samhainy, he's there with his pips for eyes, his Hammer of the Witches bangs. I can hear the apple-slice crisp diction. What the hell is his surname? Why have I got Blondie's "Call Me" in my head? 

I'd love to run up to him and tell him how great he is, even if, in all honesty, I never actually finished "The Witch". But I can't call him Ronald. Ronnie. Ronno. Professor Ron. "Professor Ronnie! I love your important work on DVD extras. Do you ever get mistaken for Kim Newman, whose full name I can remember."

No. I don't feel cool about it. 

And the moment's gone and Susan and I are walking into the drama of Oxford and, immediately, I hear screaming. A woman in a baseball cap is pounding down the street. There's a hoodie underneath her cap and her eyes are transparent blue, her skin the grey of clay. She's furious. The object of her fury is a tall, gangling man, swivel eyes matching his swivel body. He adopts a loose limbed judo stance, ready for anything. His long, equine teeth are exposed and air dried. Refereeing, between the two, is a small, black woman. The two antagonists are clearly drug enthusiasts, but I get no sense of that from her. She's conciliatory but, with arms extended, painfully, exhaustedly, used to doing this. She looks almost bored. She's much smaller than they are, a buffer between Titans. 

The noise the angry woman has been making is: "Move." She's like a seething cow. "Mo-o-ove."

The black woman entreats. "He's okay. He's okay. He was just talking to me." But he looks very un-okay, very nervous, widening his stance, leaning in like a prop forward. He tries to push his top lip down his teeth, but the friction makes the action slow and uneven and turns to a sneer he probably wasn't intending. 

The shouting woman is close to me and Susan now. Her face is grey as a dead tooth, her eyes hooded and sparking with rage. She also looks like she could sleep this off, or that she may be seconds away from forgetting why she's angry. It's him. He's the source, but if he were suddenly not there her anger would dissipate, snap out of focus and the lens of her fury would widen into low level discontent with everything. But he lacks the gumption to leave, hovering like a goalie, licking his leathery, watchstrap lips, and remains the lightning rod. 

"He's okay. He's okay," says the black woman, her consoling mantra, but the fury is not having it. 

"He needs to move. Move from my scene!"

Move from my scene! I thrill, quietly. Lovely turn of phrase. This drama doesn't scare me. Normally, everything scares me: proximity, a raised voice, non-branded sportswear, a loose canon, naked aggression, everything this woman is doing. But she doesn't see me. I don't exist to her. She lives in a world of grey wraiths stepping out of her way. Only three people in her world are real: her, her friend and her enemy. Solid. People of substance. Real people. 

I've often been impressed by the extraordinary energy of people in the demimonde: the poses and slights, the constant drama, the operatic richness, fighting and feuding, exiting stage left, crashing stage right, fighting and feuding, alliances formed and dissolved. They may be killing themselves but they're definitely alive for now. It's all happening, right now, at once, a mushroom cloud of synaesthesia that would take the back of my head off. They don't see people like me. We're not even supporting characters. We might be faces painted on the backdrop. They'd just walk past me, fat and cosy and complacent. Nothing to them. No mettle, no gristle, no boisterous joy. I barely breathe out. And I don't stick around to see how this plays out. Susan and I move onto the next drama, 

An elderly bearded Christian has a trestle table in the street. It's covered in pro-Jesus literature. He's white-bearded, and bald, a little ornithologist of a man in a cagoule. If you were going to cast a well-meaning Christian duffer, somebody sidling up to you at the allotment and trying to get you involved in the harvest festival at your local church, this would be your guy. Half-moon spectacles, for Christ's sake. But you'd be way off. He's had enough. He's hanging by a thread. He's had a morning of no one wanting to hear a single thing about Jesus. Though why evangelical Christians think Jesus is news is baffling. We've all heard of Jesus. He's up there with Santa. The Santa of Easter, unless you celebrate the Easter Bunny. 

A man walks past. He has a back-pack, high-end, out-doory clothing, but not posh. He has something of Adrian Chiles about him. Something of Cheddar Man. There's an altercation. The Christian attempts to interest the man in his literature, but he keeps walking, head down. He says something out of the corner of his mouth that I see but don't hear. For a moment, the Christian stands, arms by his sides, pamphlet bunching in his fist, his pale face colouring as though his head was a glass slowly filling with tomato juice. He tears after the other man and there's another scuffle, another verbal dog-fight, but the man keeps walking, head down, like Christ on the Via Dolorosa, with the Christian, teeth bared, standing behind him, shouting in a shrill voice, the red of his face against his cotton wool beard like blood on a bandage: "Eventually, whatever you say, you will have to come to Jesus!"

The man tosses back, "Yeah, maybe, but I'll continue to swerve his witnesses, yeah?"

The Christian had been defeated. The dragon had slain St George. The backpacker carried on walking. Sang froid in the face of the lake of fire. He was an unflappably ugly man. You couldn't imagine him upset. His face was as set and solid as a Panettone. I envied him. My face is a firework display, its the wind across the water, it's boiling spuds. This man was a born poker player and I couldn't bluff my way out of late library returns. Though I think librarians have special training now. And then there are the thumbscrews...

I turned back just in time to see the Christian kick over his trestle table. The leaflets slipped off the non-stick plastic table cloth in sheaves, and the table was easily re-righted, the papers returned mostly undamaged. A serious woman with long dark hair poking out of a furry hood was listening to the red faced man complain bitterly. Patience of a saint. 

Hutton. 

Professor Ronald Hutton. 

It's all still in there somewhere. Though its proving harder to retrieve. I'm a gun dog with one eye and three legs these days. Prof. Ron will be long gone now. Or he won't. He may still be spinning around outside the pub. All of this happened in about three minutes. Carfax. It's Oxford's liveliest intersection, I understand.