A Rubber Mask and High, High Heels

Surely this must be one of the strangest photos I've ever taken.

Here's the backstory: I was walking home from the dry cleaners with Olga yesterday afternoon when I saw a man approaching us who just didn't look quite right. Another guy noticed him too, and pulled out his phone to take a photo. The first man, who by now I could see was wearing a rubber mask, crouched down in a shrub, and phone-guy and I both took pictures. The man in the mask never said a word. He simply stood up and kept walking down the street.

Olga, being sensible, was scared of him.

Who's that mask supposed to be, anyway? To me it looks like Boris Yeltsin, but it seems highly unlikely that someone would be walking around London in a tie-dye hat and a Boris Yeltsin mask. It's more likely to be someone contemporary and newsworthy. Unless Yeltsin is supposed to bring to mind that other Boris, Boris Johnson, who is London's mayor?

These two ladies were walking nearby, in shoes that didn't look exactly easy to walk in.

Speaking of Boris Johnson, I read in the paper an allegation by his sister, a Notting Hill resident, that noise from the recent Notting Hill Carnival made her sitting room ceiling collapse. Carnival floats used to carry steel drum bands, but these days they're tricked out with huge speakers -- leaving nearby residents "throbbing and pulsating to the ear-splitting decibels of the carnival, to the pimped-up sound systems called things like Far Too Loud and Rampage," in Rachel Johnson's words.

Which makes me even more glad that we left town.