mostly david ephgrave

Don’t you hate it when a car drives past you with Beat It blaring from the radio and you try not to match the tempo with your feet? This sort of thing may not happen to you, but it certainly happens to me. Yesterday, in fact. There I was, innocently walking down the street at 139bpm when a Rover-driving Jacko fan appeared alongside me with his window wound down and his bass turned up. Try as I might, I couldn’t break from the rhythm. Thank God he wasn't listening to Billie Jean, or he would have expected the paving slabs beneath me to start lighting up. The speed of the traffic was such that he was next to me for ages. The awkwardness went on far longer that it should. It felt like my own personal mash up of Motown’s 25 th Anniverary special and Saturday Night Fever’s opening credits. I should have been wearing flares or white socks. I was relieved when he eventually pulled away. The next track on Thriller is Human Nature which is in half-time, and I don’t think I’d...

This morning I looked out of my kitchen window and saw a Royal Mail van reversing so quickly and perfectly around my estate that – just for a moment – I thought the world was rewinding. I should probably point out that it was first thing in the morning; early enough for me to briefly forget that a rewinding Royal Mail van was an impossibility. It was but a fleeting moment – but boy, was that fleeting moment convincing. I must stop eating hash cakes for breakfast. It’s an unusual feeling when the world presents you with moments like this, with normality swiftly turned on its head. It’s particularly vexing when you’re the only person around to witness it; like the Universe is making a personal joke at your expense. It’s a bit like the time I accidentally knocked over the draining rack next to my sink whilst washing up – and as it clattered to the ground it perfectly replicated the opening drum-fill to ‘Rock With You’ by Michael Jackson.   No-one e...