It’s odd how an entire day can be summed up in 3 seconds of it.
I spent the day traveling, not in a nomadic self-enlightenment way, but in a getting on a coach, sitting on a coach, staying on the coach as it got diverted up the M40, staying on that coach more as it got caught in traffic thanks to the snow that is far less romantic from a national express than it is when I am using it to make snowman in greenwich park, then eventually getting off the coach in manchester and killing time in the town centre before getting on a tram to go to the gig.
The three seconds happened in the killing time zone.
I went into HMV – i figured that the four days I have up north gigging could do with being nicely punctured by a DVD or two.
I hadn’t realised quite how quickly DVD’s had gone cheap. there was a whole bunch in the sale for £3, and not shit films, in fact, a lot of good films, the only problem was that i’d seen them all.
But now I’d been hooked in by these cheap prices on the downstairs i knew I was ruined for the rest of their mighty selection.
I went upstairs anyway, unaware the best three seconds of the day were barely four seconds away.
I’ve been wearing big army boots to combat the snow, there isn’t a lot of snow in the HMV in manchester, but it didn’t seem like an opportune moment to change them.
The laces had been constantly working themselves loose and this was such a time. I stepped off the escalator at the top near the DVD chart only to find my foot not wanting to leave. I looked being me to see that the lace was caught in the mechanism.
Suddenly the silhouetted warning signs of my childhood, and a film with a welly going down the crack flashed before me, I was surely going to die here, being dragged into the Manchester HMV escalator workings.
But that never happened, I noticed it was just the end of the lace caught round one of the jaggedy bits of the lip of the escalator. I unhooked it and was free.
This all took three seconds, but my heart was beating, I felt alive, exhilarated, happy and scared at the same time. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry and get it caught again all at the same time.
My day had been dull, now something had happened – I didn’t neatly die, but almost thought I might be about to. I felt like i deserved to be a part of 5th Feb 2009.
I wanted to tell the world so I did up shoe laces then told twitter “xxx”
I never bought a DVD, what action film could live up to these three seconds?