One Man's Performance Art, Is Another's Three Mile Walk Home

CANARY WHARF: On the weekend I’ll be swapping the Hammersmith and Fulham Libraries for some southside variant like South Lambeth. But before I do that I’ve been desperately trying to hoover as much information out of Peter Ackroyd’s London before I return it five weeks late. On Monday night I was reading about the Blitz and how this city and its brave citizens marched through four years of sustained bombing with a grimy faced stoicism. They would not be defeated. Not even when the terrifying doodlebugs delivered their destruction from foreign lands.

So with this as the background I hopped off the Tube this morning and ducked across the road to pick up some photos, a tub of strawberries and a packet of shaved ham. When I walked into the Morrisons a queue was forming beside a recently erected police line and a troupe of Aussies, still shower wet, were being marched out of their hostel. I lingered for a couple of minutes, this being London I expected some half-crazed PD with a knife being talked into a peaceful surrender.

Errands over fifteen minutes later and outside the bustling green had been transformed. Passengers were blocked from walking down the other side of the road, people were no longer allowed to enter the Morrisons, the Tube station across the road was closed, police helicopters swarmed overhead and the air was rich with the sound of sirens. By the time I got down to the Hammersmith and City stop that was shut as well. The police line, like urban encroachment, continued to march inevitably down the street.

By the time I’d crossed the green people were being evacuated from everywhere. Even the markets were shut. There was a crowd gathering at the bottom of the park, people trying to get to the Central line and beyond. As I walked home down Uxbridge Road I watched bus after bus stacking up behind each other, cars full of irate motorists and a steady stream of pedestrian traffic flowing in both directions.

It turns out a “performance artist” had placed five suspicious packages in the Hammersmith – Shepherd’s Bush area including one in the busy Hammersmith Broadway Shopping Centre. While I was utterly shocked, frightened and a little excited by all activity I met in the streets seem to meet the day’s events with little more than annoyance. On the three mile trudge home I suddenly felt like a Londoner and a tourist at the same time.