Only in America

I have seen some strange people since arriving here. Its not that you don’t get strange people in London, of course you do. It’s just that here people tend to ignore them more.

Here are the strangest people I have come across so far:

1. The guy who stands across from Wall Street with a sign which says “College graduate looking for work, drug free”. He sometimes stands there all day and he’s obviously cold because he jumps up and down all the time. Why doesn’t he go home and work on his CV? Harsh but true.

2. I was watching a programme about tattooing the other day. One of the people featured on the show was a middle aged woman with hardly any teeth (always a bad sign) who had framed a grilled cheese sandwich that she said had an imprint of the Virgin Mary. She wanted an image of the sandwich tattooed onto her breast. I will say no more other than the fact that she sold the sandwich (in a frame) on ebay for $25,000. There’s one born every minute.

3. A few weekends ago we went to Washington DC. It’s a strange city with pockets of wealth and power and poverty and crime. There are lots of homeless people in the City and one evening as we were walking to a restaurant we came across a homeless woman poo-ing, yes poo-ing in the street. Her backside facing us. It was very sad to see someone with absolutely no dignity left and I am not mocking her for a single second. All the same it was a bit surreal and not very nice.

4. The guy on the subway train today reading aloud from a book. I have no idea what he was reading as I turned my ipod up even louder but he obviously thought we would all like to listen.

5. The lady who marches up and down a small section of the esplanade near our apartment. She wears a big scarf round her head so that you can only see her eyes and shakes her hands as if she’s starring in a cabaret show.

6. The woman who goes to my gym and works out wearing a Trench Coat (yes really). Perhaps she’s cold. She's my favourite nutter.

7. The guy who was standing in the middle of a very busy road on Saturday night pretending to be a bird. I think he needs to stay off the Crack for a while.