Today is the first Down Day of the New Year.
To celebrate this, at precisely 3:41pm today in the past, a man will be standing in Leicester Square, dressed in a business man costume and smoking a cigarette.
He’ll be watching the pigeons pecking and scuffling amongst the scraps underfoot. He’ll be looking, empty-eyed at the near-faceless people who pass him, clacking and scuffing the heels on their feet. He will glance, indifferently and without focus, at the clouds rolling past overhead, fluffing up the sky in frayed un-safety-pinned cottons, and the seeping sunbeams that bleed from between them.
He’ll be wondering which of them got it right, and why that means he got it wrong - why he can’t be a person, anymore than he could be a pigeon or a cloud.
But mostly he will be smoking a cigarette and wearing a business man costume, standing in Leicester Square at precisely 3:41pm.
The performance will last for, at most, several months.
Hurry. You will miss it.