Chameleon
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Chameleon
Counter-intuitively it’s a hi-vis vest. Stand thoughtfully, a cap pulled down over your eyes. Walk purposefully, toolbag or tablet in hand. Sit in the café drinking sweet milky tea. No one gives you a second look.
So I have plenty of time to plan. To watch for opportunity. Learn the patterns of traffic outside the office, when and where cars and vans take the turn and dive down into the underground car park. Where the pavement gets blocked by smokers, where walkers slow down and where they speed up, for reasons subliminally communicated by lamp posts and paving slabs.
So when the two men emerge, talking avidly to one another I am ready. I have a cone, a hi-vis vest and a loud voice. “Watch out there,” I say and everyone has eyes on me.
It’s both camouflage and a sign of authority. If you declare loudly and firmly most people obey and even those who want to argue must acknowledge that you are someone who cannot be neglected.
I step out to where the garage opens onto the road and place the cone there. A great black car slows and signals. I wave them on, and after a moment they pull away. The power of the hi-vis vest.
“Watch out gents,” I say to the two men who slow and stop before one of them can trip over the cone.
“Thank you,” says one, and the other nods.
The hold up causes the pavement to fill, people confusedly trying to make their way around each other. And at that moment emerges a white van from the garage and I clear the path. Everyone trapped in place.
Two women ran into each other, spilling one’s papers. Everyone turns to collect them. Conversations strike up in the tiny moment as the van waits on the curb, checking the traffic. Then it pulls away.
People who would never have met are now talking to each other. Looking at each other. Fascinated by each other. And none of them notice as I walk away, cone in hand, hat pulled down. Made invisible by my hi-vis vest.
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