Nelson Galaxy

Oh boy, was I delighted that my Easter weekend was sound tracked by a very loud shop alarm. This has now been firing off for a week, during the day, and more importantly, during the night. I am not getting much sleep. I have reached the point where I have difficulty discerning what is real and what is hallucinatory.

So I am not sure if I saw this or if I imagined it. On Sunday, I looked out of my window to espy a moped charging down the Mile End Road. It was going rather fast. Driving the moped was a large, overweight man whose size dwarfed the vehicle. It appeared as though he was sat atop an engine attached to two small wheels.

Rather than a helmet he was wearing swimming goggles and a snorkel, through which he was breathing rapidly. The goggles made his eyes bulge out of his head and he was sweating profusely. His alien appearance was exaggerated by the fact he was wearing a pair of false Vulcan Spock ears and a Michael Jackson Thriller-era jacket.

He was being pursued by two policemen riding bikes and wearing fluorescent jackets. They were determined to catch this bizarre apparition. He attempted to pull a wheelie on the tiny motorised machine. It could not handle his weight and, with a screech of rubber and metal, he flew over the handlebars, to land face down on the road. The policemen pounced on him like a fluorescent flying squad and escorted him away. Onlookers pointed and laughed.

Surely, I imagined this. It’s too bizarre to be true. However, I saw a story about him on ‘London Today’. It turns out it was the notorious vagabond and trickster Knievel the Evil. Curious.