This is a performance

On Friday 28 August 2009 I went to my friend Alice's house for Shanty Show, which was both a house warming and a chance for people to bring their art along to her new (thus temporarily empty) flat and exhibit it for one night. Perennially running late as I am, I hadn't had a chance to choose some pictures to bring, but I wanted to contribute something to the evening as I am very supportive of Alice's attempts to create a different sort of party and art experience. So, on the way there I wrote the following text, which I intended to read to everyone at some point in the evening. Unfortunately, the event turned out not to be conducive to a reading so the text was never read out loud, i.e., as a 'performance'. It became dormant. I found the experience which sparked the text very interesting, however, so have decided to revive it here in blogform. Thus, I am typing the text out loud now. Perhaps this is a 'performance', too:

This evening I got splashed while waiting to cross the road to go wait for a bus (352). Like what you see in the movies, this has never happened in real life before. [There was a huge amount of water in the gutter below me.] I stared at the water. And I thought how funny it was there was so much of it when it wasn't even raining today. Then I saw three buses coming toward me. I didn't move as the first approached. I stared at the water. I stared at the bus. The synapses didn't fire. A wave gushed up from the curb and sprayed the front of me with water. I went "oh" and jumped back. A woman smoking a fag stumbled past at this moment and began to laugh. I looked at her. By this stage I'd stepped back from curb, so I stepped back toward it to try to cross again. Simultaneously the second bus came. I jumped back, lightly sprayed again. The woman kept laughing as she walked away up the street. I stept [sic] forward as the third bus approached. He honks at me in warning plus I'm quicker this time, I jump back. The spray misses me. The woman is still laughing. The water is still rippling. And now I am smiling to myself and to her. I wait for a gap in the traffic and cross the road to the bus stop. Then I realise I'm much wetter than I'd thought. I pat myself down. I wait for the bus. The bus is 10 minutes late.