Today when walking up Seymour Street a pigeon flew into a plate glass window, bounced, and hit me in the head. We both stopped, stunned, before it hobbled off and before I broke out into a stream of profanities whilst wiping the side of my head.



People walked past staring. I think the pigeon stared.



I was aware I looked insane. I'm sure the pigeon thought so.



I felt insane. Barely in control. Wanting to kick the pigeon's ass. Or break the window. Or just generally have a fit in the middle of the street. To raise my fist and scream into the sky "haven't I been the butt of enough of your jokes lately?" To let go of the anxiety pressing against my chest. But I couldn't. You see, crazy people don't rant in London. They mutter, they hide, they learn how to drive little white delivery vans or to present children's television, or to just generally disappear.



An out-of-control-cursing-American-pigeon-target is an unusual sight in London.



Once and only once did a crazy person confront me. I was on the Tube and a man pointed at me and screamed, "they'll kill you if you set foot in Jamaica." I stared back and said, "I wasn't planning to." That shut him up and he neither pointed nor screamed again. He just muttered, "kill you dead, they would".



I live entirely too much in my head. I know that. I have elaborate fantasies that have their own physical, chronological, and psychological dimensions. They are rich in detail and plot and characterisation and can occupy big chunks of time -- whether I'm sitting on a bus, walking down Edgware Road, or working.



I have entire relationships in my head. I plot the initial meeting, the seduction, the emotional arc, the demise, the aftermath. I know where we met, what we did that first morning after, what his friends thought of me, what I wore when we met his parents, what I wanted to keep when he moved out, what his next boyfriend would look like.



I know what happens after I win an £11.5 million lottery. How much I give to whom. How i quit my job.



I know what it feels like at the end of my life. When I'm alone, without family, out of touch with people, friends, reality. When the scenes in my head are larger and more important than reality. When I'm facing mortality and looking back at respectable, yet unremarkable, achievements.



What brought this on? I was HIT BY A BOUNCING PIGEON today. It was a cruel disruption. And my only response to it was to swear in shock. Because, you see, I know how much I can live in my head. How I can stand at the intersection of "life" and "romance" and not see the lights changing. Not see when to cross ... whether to face or follow the traffic ... where there might be left or right or even, yes it happens, u-turns.



But dammit, I'm blaming the pigeon.