Invisible Appreciative Audiences

I don't know whether everybody else does what I am about to describe or not. I suspect that other people might, but I don't want to make myself too comfortable in my imagined probability of its likelihood.

Okay. So I'm writing about this because I keep thinking it's a one-off, apparently random thought, and yet it keeps happening, so it needs purging.

Sometimes, when walking at speed down a crowded street, or changing between stations on the Underground, I find I am quite amazed by my speed and agility at dodging people, umbrellas, small children, spit. I mean, you have to put this into context, I was not the most able of children when it came to PE at school.

(Far from it. I was in the divs' group which was quietly mortifying for the most part but excellent in summer because the teachers went and taught the lithe, tautly-muscled sporty kids on the grassy tennis courts while the fat/skeletal/manic depressive/lazy girls got to sunbathe idly on the tarmac courts (otherwise known as the basketball/netball court or playground. Or gravel-/Frazzle packet-/bully-strewn no-man's land wasteland, depending on your viewpoint which was dependent once again, I suppose, on which PE group you were in. ))

So imagine my delight at suddenly appearing to walk on air, as thin as a reed, gliding round obstacles and whipping into sudden spaces as if I were in another time dimension like in The Matrix, dodging and watching for chances to get ahead with the sharpened senses of a panther, a preternatural alertness, an animal's instinctive awareness and singleminded determination. Sometimes, just sometimes, everything seems to fit around me in a big perfect cosmic tesellation. Is it the same for everyone?

But, because this feeling is so rare, I believe it to be some sort of huge achievement, for which I deserve praise, and this is where the Invisible Appreciative Audience comes into the equation. I imagine there to be people, somewhere, watching my progress and the people flowing round me like water around a rock. I imagine their admiring whispers to each other as they shake their heads in stunned disbelief of my incredible grace and skill.

The people who (I guess) must watch the CCTV cameras on Oxford Street, are putting down their McDonalds milkshakes on their consoles, watching me on the huge bank of screens in front of them, looking at each other in the blue light from the flickering images and saying in awe "Did you see the way that girl just moved through those dense, shifting, shuffling, barging crowds? That was just AMAZING."

I didn't like PE.