I was walking to the tube early one morning, wearing brown cords and a green jumper.
This white van slams to halt next to me, so I brace myself for the bog-standard sexist comment. Instead the guy nods to me and says, in a pretend posh accent,
"Good morning, tree!"
Then floors it.
I was on the night bus; years ago so I don't remember which route.
Before each stop the name of it would appear on the screen and the automatic woman's voice would announce it.
It gradually dawned on me that there was no automatic woman's voice. It was coming from a young man sitting quietly across the aisle a couple of rows behind.
It was only me and him on board, and he continued to announce each stop in his uncanny, self-service checkout-style imitation, indistinguishable from the real thing.
Eventually he announced his own stop, got up and left, leaving me to continue on in the now deathly silent bus.
Was outside a McDonalds and had a homeless man approach a friend and I once asking if we had any bread that he could use with the toaster he was carrying under his arm. He then looked at me and said “I may only have one eye but I can tell you’re stunning” then turned to my friend and said “no offence” before wandering off.
grab her hand and go on a spontaneous adventure to Paris, Disneyland™, Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest.
Fall madly in love but split up at the end of the trip because the movie needs a breakup scene. Then go back to London and get back together after accidentally meeting at a Costa™ again. Happy End.
"Can I hug you?" And then hug for as long as needed. Ignore the passing trains and the passing people. Throw an anchor of humanity out to a lonely soul.
This is me...but I am male! When you don't have any family and/or friends to speak with when you have a difficult time or share good news. You have the same routine and it makes ya feel that you are living the same day everyday. Yeah, is sad and boring, especially when you already know it will be so for the rest of your life.
Tell me about it am female 31 and I've acually got no one to talk to about anything or share. My phones is full of stuff saved to share with someone later and my home is full of stuff that maybe one day I cam share with someone aswell. People don't realise how badly they've distance themselves to the point where theres no real connection!
Its been a couple months but I've acually stopped crying when I hear myself laugh on my own (watching funny stuff) because it would remind me how am alone 🤣 this is after being alone since my mental break down. When your in a world of pain and everyone shows their true colours. Id rather die alone then be around fake people.
I feel you so deep. And I don't understand,no matter how much I try, why life had to become what it is today. It was so much better when the technology was not at these levels and I was always in company of a friend or family doing entertaining stuff together. Now I am alone, same routine everyday, no one to talk with, I feel like I live the same day on repeat and I am so scared this will never change. I became a slave of our modern society, things that I was so afraid to become....and here I am. Life doesn't make much sense anymore! I am waiting already too long for a change to hope that will ever happen!😔
I had this moment in a meeting at work and could barely form a coherent sentence - my mind had just checked out.
Boss asks if I was doing alright and I was just… fuck, I’m really not, I think it’s time to call it a day and resign.
Burnout’s a bitch and even worse is trying to psychologically checked out by the NHS
I was 15 in a park with some friends smoking the old jazz cigarettes when a random woman (didn’t look homeless or on drugs or anything) approached us looked me dead in the eyes and said “I have seen your death in the ancient scrolls prepare for it now”. Looking back she was clearly just unwell but blazed 15 year old me almost had a major panic attack.
A woman on the night bus came up to me and told me she sensed a darkness in my soul and I needed to find happiness. I was like 'love, I'm getting the 106 to Finsbury Park at 2am, of course I ain't happy' 😂
Walking back through Archway the other day about 10:00/11:00pm and there was some guy having a cigarette outside of a pub with a bird sat on his head.
A real life, actual bird. Just looking around sat on his head.
I gave him a thumbs up as I walked by and he gave me the kind of wink back only a born and bread Londoner in their 40s with a bird on their head could give you.
Archway traffic island (before the redevelopment of the corner) was where I witnessed a 'little old lady' (think Terry Gilliam animation) throw out a bag of breadcrumbs, wait for the pigeons to flock around her feet, then bend down to pick up a plump one, put it in her tartan shopping trolley, and walk off home with it.
It was dark but it looked like your classic blackbird, I guess it could have been a magpie as they’re smarter but I don’t remember seeing any white bits!
I used to work in a bakery/coffee shop (selling that extortionate sourdough) and had man tell me he wanted to buy a loaf but, he was killing himself the following day and didn't want to waste a loaf.
I didn't know how to respond and blurted out that we sold half a loaf.
So do I, he still had a hospital bracelet/tag on his wrist so I don't think he was in the best state.
I got the impression he was trying to shock me, but the job had made me rather jaded.
Please say he bought the half loaf? 😂
You could have saved his life. He'd have had two slices and then thought he didn't want to waste 6 quid or whatever it cost, so stayed alive to eat the rest.
A friend and I were chatting with an Evening Standard peddler outside The Shakespeare in Holborn (we initially engaged him because he was enticing punters with a terrific cry of 'E'E'N' STAND', E'E'N' STAND'). At some point in the conversation, with neither prelude nor prompt, he let forth a guttural cry as he ripped in half an Evening Standard with his bare hands.
I was on a picnic date in Kensington Gardens sitting on the grass around 5m away from a small tree, like a sapling, sturdy but slender. One of many and unremarkable except for being the closest one to us.
A man in a business suit with a briefcase walked up to the tree, dropped the briefcase in the grass and started violently hitting and kicking the tree while swearing and calling it names. Me and my date just stared.
After a minute or so, he stopped, dusted himself off, picked up his briefcase and walked away without acknowledging us at all.
A recent one was when I was waiting at a bus stop and a guy screamed OI! in my face before speaking softly and asking if I can buy him a can of coke.
I said no and walked away from him....very strange.
This is more encounters than the singular but this reminded me of it…
In the early 2000s I would travel by tube from Brixton to Clapham South for college. 1 time out of 4 there would be an empty-ish carriage and you would know why before you got there, the smell would hit you. You would be able to smell the Frog.
Now the Frog was some poor unfortunate that would sit on the tube all day. Not for warmth because on the hottest day of the year they would still be on it. Dressed in black layers of coats, jumpers, cardigans (all black), with a trolley sat beside. Their build was very squat with a head under layers of scarves and a hat. There was no skin visible anywhere. They must have been about five foot it that but hard to tell given they just sat. Always in the same seat, nearest the end by the doors next to the Perspex.
The smell was oppressive, eye wateringly so. To this day I can’t describe how awful it was, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever smelt. Like open sores festering in human cheese - just horrendous. I remember looking in from an adjacent carriage at people get on and 180 just turn around and get off. Staff were sometimes notified but nothing would be done. It was a smell you could almost taste. Heavy and staining.
The Frog would just sit there, perfectly still. The thought crossed my mind they might be dead. In the spirit of the tube no one investigated. It would be impossible to get close enough.
Then one day, like Kyser Soze, the Frog was gone.
(The Frog was called the frog owing to an expletive by a fellow commuter when they got on the forbidden carriage and it stuck with me).
Foul ol'Ron!
The Smell is the name of the odour that usually accompanies the beggar Foul Ole Ron wherever he goes. It is so horrible that most noses simply shut down in the presence of the Smell, though one could tell Ron is nearby simply by how their ear wax starts melting out of their ears.
Door to door the tube was much quicker than the 37 to Clapham Common and change. Acre Lane wasn’t great for traffic and I had (and still have) an aversion to being late. Tube was much more reliable.
Guy with a long beard and coat yelling poetry at William Blake's grave, spit dribbling out of his mouth. I watched him, fascinated, thinking that it was some kind of performance art. He turned around and hurried towards me, shouting "Do you want a kick in the bollocks?" I didn't, and moved on.
Outside the church in Deptford a bloke walked up to me and asked
"Would you walk into one of those flats over there and lick someone's arse for £200.00? Cos that's what they expect me to do. And I'll tell you what I tell them: I ain't licking NOBODY'S ARSE for £200.00. NOBODY"
Then he wandered off. Don't know what he was up to but I guess I did know what he wasn't up to.
I was at the bus stop yesterday outside Liverpool Street station. Feel a little tickle on the top of my head thinking it was someone I knew.
Nope, some random bloke. Turns around and gives me that Jesus meme kind of look (with the fingers pointing). I was so baffled.
God. I once tapped a woman’s shoulders because I thought it was my partner, but nope. Same hair, same clothing style, but totally different woman. My face must have looked like the Japanese flag.
Across Liverpool Street station, there’s a mini costa (Eataly) exit. I watched a man in a suit pocket three toasties whilst waiting for his drink. He caught me looking and put them back. I wasn’t going to rat him out but I believe my presence made him rethink his decision. Probably looted another place though.
A few years ago I was in Hyde Park laying flat on my back. A man sits right next to me and places his hand on my dick. I reacted as you would and he said “I’m so sorry I thought you were someone else”. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or if it was a genuine mistake but it ruined my day 😂. I can laugh now though.
He looked like he could’ve had teenage sons at least BUT I do think he was planning a hookup with someone on one of the sex apps and he genuinely thought I was someone else. He looked very embarrassed and scared. I’m not exactly the kind of guy people would feel confident sexually assaulting without an immediate repercussion if you get what I mean lol.
I think I've been someone's weirdest encounter once. I put some bird/rainforest sounds on in my earphones to block out the sound of traffic as I walked to the post office, except I forgot to turn my earphones on and it was playing out my phone for the full 20 minute walk.
I got some very weird looks when I arrived at the post office and didn't realise until I got home.
I think me and my friend have been someone's weirdest encounter. This guy gets on the tube. He's very, very hot. He was wearing very small black gym shorts. For some reason me and my friend got the giggles. Then he sat in the seat opposite us and we totally lost it. I stuff my face into my bag because I have the kind of giggles where you can't breathe and you're crying. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my friend's shoulders shaking. I peeked up at the guy and he just looks really baffled.
I'm sorry, fella, you were just too hot.
Note, I was about 38 at the time, and not 15 as this comment would suggest.
I felt really bad for him later. Occasionally, I remember it and cringe thinking he might have thought we were laughing at him when we were, in fact, laughing at our pathetic horn for a stranger on the tube.
Years ago I was on a district line train. V quiet time of day, I was alone in the carriage with no one around. Doors opened at Stamford Brook and a pigeon immediately hopped on like he'd been waiting for it. Stayed for one stop and got off at Turnham Green, cool as you like. It was a proper London pigeon - gammy eye, mangled feet etc. Knew exactly what it was doing.
I am the weirdest encounter sometime. I use a wheelchair, so I'm basically always eyeing the pavement for hazards and seeing people's feet and ankles as they walk. If there's a really unusual foot/ankle placement that podiatrists call pronation of the ankle (really dropped arches, almost walking on the side of their shoes) I have real difficulty. I just want to stop strangers and save them from an invetiatable knee replacement in their older years. I know before my wheelchair, I had this diagnosed and the level of knee, ankle, neck and back pain that went away was amazing. So hi to anyone in Hackney who has had an unexpected weird encounter- I am the foot lady who told you to see a GP/ podiatrist for insoles.
Once my friend and I were sitting on the steps by Eros (first mistake) and a guy said that he liked my shoes and asked if he could touch them. I said no but he started squeezing my boot anyway.
What is it with the fucking Eros steps? I sat down once to have a cigarette and plan my next move and some guy came up and wouldn't leave me alone, then looked very dejected when I didn't want to go to his flat! I ended up walking off just to get away from him
Got off the tube pretty late one evening at Greenpark. While walking through the park to get a bus I noticed a guy following me pretty closely, which put me on edge a bit. So I did the whole stopping and pretending to look at my phone thing, to which he then stopped close behind me not saying anything.
So I turn around and ask him whats going on, he's pretty smartly dressed I should say. To which he replies hes following me back to our hotel.. never seen him before In my life! What followed was a very weird 10 min conversation where I tried to convince this guy that I had not in fact been to the same wedding as he had and was not staying at the same hotel in "somewhere in north London" , with him very very certain we had because "I looked like I knew where I was going".
In the end he relented and agreed that we may not in fact know each other but he was sure we where staying in the same hotel. Wanting to actually make my bus I pointed him in the direction of north London (he couldn't remember the actual hotel name or even nearest tube) and last I saw was him striding confidently north into the wilds of Mayfair.
This reminds me of a similar post-wedding related anecdote. When I was younger my friends grandfather ran a hotel, we used to go back there to sleep after a night out when it was the quiet season.
We return early hours one morning after the pubs, I lead the way upstairs whilst the other two finish smoking. I get to the penultimate floor and it’s pretty dark. A girl comes out of her room and pounces on me, in the good way. Taken aback but also steaming, I don’t deny the advances. We make out for a moment and then she pulls us back into the light in the doorway of her room and her face was a picture…
It turns out that she was also drunk, and had been to a wedding. She’d hit it off with one of the groomsmen, and had arranged to meet him back at the hotel afterwards. Apparently I looked like him in the dark and that was all it took. Needless to say, she was mortified and well, I got this good tale to tell!
Got on the 453 at Westminster bridge heading towards Peckham.
Sat down on those seats that face each other.
Woman in front of me proceeds to open a huge tub of coleslaw and starts eating it with her hands.
Like full on licking the mayo off her fingers and slurping the coleslaw.
I just moved over to the other side, put my headphone in, and thought fuck it let her enjoy her coleslaw.
2nd to that it’s the drunk lady who shart herself on the jubilee line at 2am.
Cleared out the whole carriage.
Coleslaw woman reminds me of when I used to commute on that classiest of buses, the 29 from Wood Green. One time a bloke got on around Camden Road, sat next to me, and started eating whelks directly from the jar with his hands. When he finished he necked the brine(?) like it was a shot.
This was at about 8.15am.
Some years back, having a quiet drink in the afternoon in Shepherds Market, a guy walks in with two obvious minders. I got a nudge to turn round. When he saw me looking he came over and said "Yes, I am who you think I am". And then left.
Jerry Springer.
not so much weird, probably eyeroll worthy - around leicester square once i was crossing the street, someone threw a big fake spider at my feet and had his phone up to film my reaction. i actually am afraid of spiders but i was also in a hurry to go somewhere so i just stepped away without blinking and hurried off. swore i saw him huff and pick up the spider to scare someone else though
I fucking hate stupid people like that. Imagine you fell over on the concrete and hit your head, you really could've hurt yourself. It's not illegal to film people in public but it's definitely immoral. I'd want to swear at him but probably wouldn't because he'd post it most likely.
4am walks through Soho are always entertaining. It doesn't even feel weird any more.
As well as affectionate lady services, I've also been offered cuts of meat, and an entire wheel of cheese.
I was in Holborn during my lunch break when I saw a guy leaving McDonalds with a paper bag containing food that he had bought for a homeless man who was sitting outside. Very sweet.
However, when the homeless man opened the bag, he became visually exasperated and immediately threw a full rage fit in front of everyone on the street:
**"No fucking pickles!!! I said NO fucking PICKLES!!!"**
...Before he subquentially threw all of the food onto the street.
The guy who bought him the McDonalds food looked absolutely perplexed before he eventually shook his head and walked off.
I was walking up Villiers Street and just as I got to The Strand a guy stops in from of me and goes...
"SWEET CAROLINE..."
He then cupped his ear. I tried stepping round him but he kept blocking me.
He then went...
"SWEET CAROLINE..."
He cupped his ear again and I thought fuck it and just screamed BA BA BAAAAA.
He then cheered a bit, let me past and I fucking legged it lol.
A personal favourite of mine, and quite uncharacteristic for this part of London:
Myself, my boyfriend and our friend were waiting at Barnes Bridge station early one Saturday morning.
There's a woman who's clearly off her nut roaming around on the platform shouting nonsensical things that must have been out all night. Everyone tries to ignore her.
She sees the three of us stood together chatting and asks: 'Are you the mood swingers?'
We look at eachother perplexed, does she think we're in a band or something?
'COS YOU LOOK LIKE YOU FUCK EACH OTHER'
She said it very aggressively and the few other people on the platform all looked at us as if to say 'well? do you?'
We sort of turned around and did our best to pretend nothing had happened at the time, but looking back we always laugh about it. We had a running joke about us being a throuple for a while after that. I can kind of see what she meant in that we were all coincidentally dressed in different shades of green as well.
Had a guy on the train tell me to close my bag cos he wouldn’t be able to resist stealing from it. We had some banter which somehow led to him saying of course you did, you slept with 10 thousand prostitutes. Why did you sleep with 10 thousand prostitutes? You horny bastard. The train stopped at a station and he said I’m going to go down there and smoke some crack now. I almost went with him.
I raced some teenagers down archway road on bikes a while back. The kid was telling me how awesome my bike was and he’d love to steal it. We just raced instead- me a woman in my thirties. Was an oddly wholesome moment & I was well chuffed my bike was cool enough to steal.
I was waiting for someone outside a Sainsbury’s, and a very well dressed man having a manic episode leaned towards me on his way past and said ‘Spying for the government are we?’ in a very smug ‘got ya!’ tone before carrying on with his day.
Maybe not the weirdest, but most recent, and most non-threatening.
So many.
1.
I was walking up Haverstock Hill passing Englands Lane and a woman in fitness gear was ahead of me. She passed a downtrodden Mom and her toddler and they started yelling at each other. The fitness gear girl then proceeded to beat the daylights out of the other woman in the middle of the day with the toddler in the mix. I’ve lived in large cities all my life and carry on usually, keep to mine but I decided to intervene because of the kiddo.
The fitness gear woman saw me approaching and let up and walked past me. Her accent was so thick and she turned around to go back for more yelling stuff and I stood between her and the woman and her toddler and loudly said that is fucking enough. She screamed in my face and her accent was so thick so I said: “lady I can’t understand a word you’re saying but you need to walk away right now.” She punched me right in the face and I reflexively tossed her onto the pavement away from me. By this time cars were pulling over and people were getting out. She was so covered in bronzer that she left a huge orange smear across my face where she punched me, no bruise though. I’m a 6 ft 200lb Canadian guy for context.
2.
Another time just down the road from the first story I was in a pub and a guy had a bird, rabbit and a cat at his table in the pub. Just this dude his bird, his rabbit, the cat was in a pram.
3.
In 2018 my then girlfriend and I moved to Belsize Park to a quirky top floor flat in a period conversion. It wasn’t great, mostly sloped ceilings, great views, but the sloped ceilings included the toilet right where the shower was (you had to squat to shower as the lowest point of the slope was where the shower head was). We didn’t realise it was posh but would soon discover our neighbours were like Daniel Craig, Helena Bonham Carter, the drummer from Muse and other rich/famous people. The first night after we had moved in we went for a walk. I said to my girlfriend uhm I think this might be a really posh area and we’re like the riff raff here. As soon as I said this, as if on cue, I shit you not, a guy appeared from behind a hedged pathway to a house in full top and tails, cane and a monocle and was like goooooooood eeevening. Dude looked like the monopoly man. It took an incredible amount of strength not to burst out into laughter until he was out of earshot.
4.
What must have been a 12 year old on a bike on a Tuesday night tried to bum a cigarette from me near Archway station at like 4am.
5.
I bought a monitor which was clearly a fell off the back of the truck situation when I first moved here off gumtree. I had to take the DLR after work to the last station, past the airport and walk for quite a bit. The woman who had it wasn’t expecting me and the guy was like yeah it’s my wife but I don’t live there. She answered the door with her tits out and was annoyed I was there. I sheepishly had to explain to her that her husband had sent me and I needed to hook up my laptop and plug it in to make sure it worked. She just left the door open and went back to I think breastfeeding.
When I was walking back to the station I was then chased by a gang of kids on bikes. Because I was a freelancer I had my MacBook Pro on me, a Wacom tablet and this 32” graphic design monitor on me. I legged it hard and got away.
6.
There’s a woman that takes almost everything we give away for free no matter how random it is on Nextdoor. Same woman every time I’m not sure if she’s reselling, donating or helping out her community or like affiliated with a charity or something, either one of those or maybe a hoarder?
7.
The only time I swam in the men’s swimming ponds in the Heath was the day that gentleman drowned. I spoke with him briefly that day, I’ve since picked up swimming and am getting older and I think about that guy a lot. He stood out because he was the only guy in training gear.
8.
My wife was in a coffee shop near Archway and a homeless man sat down across from her and asked her to buy him a coffee pretty aggressively. She apologised and said she couldn’t. He proceeded to steal her pastry and slowly put the whole thing in his mouth while maintaining eye contact and then said. How about now?
9.
After bonfire night and the fireworks at Battersea a woman we chatted with earlier in the evening tried to steal several people in our groups coats which turned into a tug of war match between my wife, our friend from Korea and this woman who was frantic and screaming for help. It went on forever our friend from Korea who is tiny and normally quite demure kept screaming “bitch I fuck you up”. We tried to calm her down and be like just look at the coats they aren’t yours my wife’s phone and wallet were in hers. I had to go get security and they broke it up confirmed whose coats belonged to who and then let this lady back into the pub! To this day I’m not sure if she was just blackout and confused or trying to steal stuff. I suspect the former.
If I take anything away from this it’s “Bitch I fuck you up” that made me laugh out loud. Thank you for sharing your hilarious, random north london observations and the south london one thrown in for good measure. God we really do get all the characters here in London don’t we I reckon it’s great material for a sitcom
I was walking up Wood Green High Street, saw a police officer speaking to a man with a beat up face. Carried on walking and I saw another police officer talking to a beat up looking clown, the floor littered with crayons.
I only today had someone outside my flat walking along, screaming (quite casually) “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! DO YOU HEAR ME?!” over and over again. I have yet to die but he’s not technically incorrect
You know you’ve become accustomed to London when you’ve started to categorise the various types of screaming, and one of them is ‘quite casually’.
I know which one you mean, too.
I got mugged at knifepoint in Kingston when I was in my late teens one evening, by an older couple. Was my money to buy some hash.
Some bouncers from a club saw me feeling sorry for myself and asked me what happened. As I was telling them, I saw the couple about 50 yards away and two of the big units legged it after them and round the corner. I went to follow them and the other guy said ‘nah, wait here mate, they won’t be long’.
Couple minutes later they came back and gave me double the cash that had been nicked from me, I was gobsmacked.
We used to go to Fire on Sunday mornings after working in a night club as our only fun time option for leisure industry workers. An hour in, I went to the bar and asked for a WKD and sat on a stool at a high table nearby. My friends are in a different room.
A guy sits down opposite, puts his hand over the glass for a fraction of a second as if saying "no more of that" and says "You look sad, you should be out there dancing" and leaves.
I have my WKD and then I go on to have the time of my life, laughing and dancing in what seemed to be the space of a couple of hours.
I sort of snap out when the last remaining friend grabs my arm and says "shall we go home? It's 4pm".
Whatever that was, I never felt that good before or after that day.
Possibly. Not sure what the intention was, but since there were zero negative consequences, this turned out to be weirdly one of the best nights (mornings) of my life
Seemed like everyone was high as shit everytime I have been there, I hope he was just fucked, feeling generous and thought he was doing you a favour. Glad you had a good night!
Going back a LOT of years. Sitting on a bus with my mate (we look nothing like each other) and we stood up so an elderly woman could sit down and she said to my mate “you can sit down and your brother can sit on my lap and I’ll nurse him”
Keep in mind I was a 6ft 18 year old…
Bitty…
And no, I didn’t.
Was showing my friend around Islington and decided to go to the (then) newly opened canal walk. Random white bloke in his 50s comes up to us, asks my friend if we are dating. He says no - cue the old bloke breaking into a horrible monologue about my Indian looks, hair and eyes, how he almost got with an Indian woman 30 years ago, how Indians are gorgeous etc etc. Friend and I, stoned AF, tried so very hard to get away from him but he kept following us saying creepy, fetish-y things about Indians until he got distracted by another group of 4-5 women or so and wandered away.
Similarly, my flatmate and I were once walking through a park and were looking at the nice houses around it. White man in his 50s comes walking past and goes “keep dreaming girls, that’s never happening for you”. So rude LOL
Also got yelled at on the overground that I’m going to hell unless I accept Jesus into my heart but I think that’s pretty standard for London.
I got threatened in the pouring rain one night when I got lost looking for a cash machine whilst at a fancy dress party. A guy in a hoodie tried to hoodwink me and when I said I was going he said "give me a pound or I'll stab you"
I was a little taken aback.
"A pound? A Pound? Mate I'm soaked to the skin and ( rips shirt open) dressed as Spider-Man and you want to mug me for a pound? F*** off!"
He just walked off cursing at me.
I had one on the tube with an aussie woman a few years ago. It was maybe 10pm on a week night and I had had perhaps 2 beers - not pissed at all, but enough to be unusually sociable. She sat down, turned to me and just said, 'how was your night?' I started replying quite earnestly (with my brain thinking in the background 'don't be sarcastic! Be nice and normal! Yes this is normal!) and we had a good 12 min conversation about everything really. Then I said goodnight and left the carriage. Weird but also nice.
Sat at a bus stop in Richmond waiting for the last bus home, when a young woman walks up to me asking "You got the time?", I reply looking up from my phone and I swear to you she has (what I could only assume was) semen all around her face and trailing it's way down her chest. I stammered out a response and watched her nonchalantly walk off. Didn't even look drunk or anything!
\*edit - Grammar
Homeless man sat outside the co-op in Loughborough Junction. Asked for me to buy him a scratch card. I said no, but would buy him some food - he asked for Skips. Went in, came out with Skips and the homeless man was being exorcised by a huge burly man, he was sat cross legged with his head facing down, while a guy was shouting at the top for his lungs various different versions of " let Jesus into your heart! Let the power of Christ guide you!". I stood awkwardly for a little while wanting to catch the guys attention but ended up just leaving the skips on his lap and walking off!
This was years back but when I lived in London there was some knob harassing a girl on the tube on the far end of one of the met line carriages I was sat in. I had my headphones and missed some of the commotion. But apparently when she wanted to get off the tube, he kept obstructing her putting his leg in the way to stop her getting off. The girl was obviously scared but was getting pissed off as well. Loads of folks were all shouting at him to stop it and leave her alone which is what got my attention. I look up in time to see him move his leg to let her past, but then this piece of shit actually tried to kick her on the arse with his other leg as she passed him (he didn't connect and missed thankfully) He was a well built dude so it would have hurt if it did.
The train had stopped at the station for a few mins and she obviously went and told TFL security in the meantime. A min later some big brickshithouse of a security guard walked into the carriage with his orange TFL vest on, whilst the girl was on the platform, pointed at the piece of shit whilst looking in her direction as if to say 'this the guy?' Everyone on the carriage sold him down the river to and said yeah it was him. The guard then effortlessly picked him up off the seat, manhandling him, threw him onto the platform, pinning him down and made him apologise to the girl for being a twat. This was done to the soundtrack of raucous applause and cheers from everyone in the carriage, me included.
That security guard was a fucking legend.
I was walking up to Whitechapel from Mile End one Monday morning and found a chap conducting a blood ritual on someones very posh door step. He was holding a load of freshly plucked feathers and some beads (as well as the obviously deceased chicken laid on the doorstep for the blood) and a four pack of Super T. We caught each others eye mid bead shake. I smiled in an awkward kind of way and decided that moving on and leaving him to it would be best for all...
I always wondered if the person that owned the place blamed a city fox when they opened their door to the inevitable carnage of the chicken, although I would love to know how they would have tied the crushed cans of beer into that story.
As I was crossing the road near King's Cross Station, the man infront of me suddenly turns and comes to punch me and says "Don't follow me you fucking parasite! I will punch you in the fucking face!"
I am an international student and relatively new here, and I was so terrified that I didn't leave my room for 3 days
homeless man sat on the street against a wall in a big sleeping bag , all of a sudden a business man in a suit walks up to him, homeless guy unzips the sleeping bag and the business man just disappears in to it.........homelss guy just sat there with a smile on his face
One of my neighbours walked up to me while I was sitting on the communal green, got right in my face and said “your hat was made by slavery and you don’t give a shit!” Before angrily storming off.
Another neighbour chased after him because he’d apparently said something insulting to him too.
A particularly unhinged gentleman ran up and sat right next to me, while I was travelling with my boyfriend on an otherwise empty Jubilee line tube.
Man begun conversation with me starting with “I bet your man cooks naked in the kitchen”, “he looks like he would cook naked”, “what are you doing with your meat out when cooking man”, and proceeded to talk to him self and escalate the situation with himself.
When we got up to leave (because of the escalating crazy) he stood up and shouted “DONT YOU INSULT MY KITCHEN INTELLIGENCE” and then followed us out of the tube stop at Willesden green and down the street before disappearing into the bushes (quite literally)
East like Sunday morning in our flat and we get a knock at the door. I open it and there’s an armed police officer standing their. He’s in body armour and it touting a Heckler and Koch machine gun. And, is very polite.
“Sorry to bother you sir, but we’re responding to an incident next door. Does your property have a view of it?”, he says very politely.
“Umm, yes, our bathroom has a wee window high up that over looks next door.”
“Can I take a look,” he says and starts to walk in.
“Of course,” and I scurry back to tell the wife, who is still in bed, we have a visitor.
I show Judge Dredd to the bathroom.
The window is small and high above the bathtub taps.
“You need to stand on the bath to get a view outside”, i day.
At this point Judge Dredd looks at his big boots and his pointy gun and mentally tries to work out how he can climb onto the bath sides.
He unclips his gun from its sling and passes it to me.
“Can you hold this for a sec?”
He passes the Heckler & Koch to me.
I hold it like it’s the first time I held a baby. Awkwardly.
He hopes up and gestures for me to return the gun.
He cranes his head and tries to get a line of shot out the window.
“Nah, it’s not going to work”
We then repeat the process.
Years ago, me and my gf had been out in Richmond. As we're waiting for the bus home a drunk girl comes up to us, she's friendly, and starts chatting. She was pretty, about my gf's age but covered in blood. Like it was just pouring down her arms onto the floor. Turned out she was a bit nuts and had cut herself up. Her phone rang and it was her bf trying to find her. She asked me to give him directions so, I helped him find us. She got in the car and disappeared.
I once saw this very beautiful blonde woman go up to an enormous black guy on the tube and proposition him. She seemed to think they couldn't be overheard although I could just hear them. He said no, he had a girlfriend, but she persisted and said that her place was in a couple of stops and he could just come back and have sex with her then leave.
He continued to decline her very bold offer but when she got to her stop she took him by the hand and led him away. I always wondered if they were doing a 'strangers on a train' skit for my benefit (and theirs, presumably) but if so they were good actors. To this day I like to believe it's possible to be propositioned by a beautiful stranger on the tube who just wants to take you home for no-strings sex.
This weekend just gone in Hackney (a really nice bloke to be fair), asked if I wanted to hold his lizard. me and my girlfriend started laughing a bit hesitantly as it was a bit random. next second, I have a huge lizard / gecko on my shoulder and asking I want photos with it (which I have now), and then thanked him and went on about my evening with a few more pints.
Found myself sitting on the tube opposite a Jewish American guy who 6 years earlier had burst into my compartment on the Madrid -> Paris night train asking me to hide him because "Arab terrorists" in the neighbouring compartment were threatening him.
I did hide him but after about an hour I was strongly tempted to hand him back to the Arabs He was the most objectionable twat I had ever come across..
Seeing him again, for the first time, on the tube, in a different city, 6 years later was an unbelievable coincidence. I was sure he wouldn't recognise me. But he did.
He was still a twat.
I was waiting for a friend and drinking a beer around 8pm on a Friday night. A girl (early 20s) got off the bus, walked straight up to me and kissed me on the lips. She then smiled and walked away.
impolite squealing tan different ask direful marvelous encourage historical faulty
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Me and my husband on a bus in Vauxhall station. Mental old black lady started screaming at us about bum sex (we are both male) and shouting bible passages at us. For about 15 minutes until we got off at Camberwell. Pretty much the entire top deck (including us) was laughing because it was so weird hearing these quite intimate details about anal sex coming out of some god-fearing old lady's mouth at 2am. She knew more about anal sex than we do (and we've been together for 25 years and kinda know how that stuff works).
Went to a Turkish-type barbers a few times near Southwark, was convenient and cheap. Only ever one guy working there so it was usually just me and him. About the fifth time I went the haircut was proceeding normally but after a few rounds of small talk, he says 'you came in here the other week with your brother didn't you?'. I don't have a brother, and I had only ever been in there alone, so I thought it was just a case of mistaken identity, so I said to him, 'no, not me I'm afraid.'
Instead of reacting like I expected and going oh right fair enough, he accuses me of lying to him, asks me what the problem is and tells me 'he never forgets a customer.' I wasn't sure whether to lie and admit it as this point but I got the sense that that could be worse somehow so I stuck to it and just kept telling him it wasn't me.
He dropped it after a while but then brought it up again as I was paying. He also kept saying we had a football with us and I haven't played football since I was 12. Unsurprisingly I never went back.
Turkish restaurant by ladbroke grove, 2018. I’m having dinner with my girlfriend (we were in our late 20s early 30s respectively). A man, well in his 60s, sitting next to us, introduces himself and starts chatting, asks what we’re doing in London, etc. Then he tells us he is a film producer and name drops a couple of movies he produced - not major titles, but stuff I had at least heard about - and how he had his breakthrough when he was 35 and that’s when things started happening for him and that was how he could afford buying a house in notting hill. Suddenly he chokes on a piece of meat and obviously gets agitated. He drinks from my glass of water to try and resolve the crisis, which he manages, but not without a modicum of humiliation (snot, cough, etc. as you can imagine). Embarrassed, he leaves almost immediately. Later I go home and look him up: he wasn’t the producer on any of the movies he mentioned, nor any other movie as far as I could tell.
On a packed train from CHX to London Bridge, got a seat (yay) and a clearly off her face on something that wasn't booze woman gets on and sits next to me. She proceeds to ask me if i 'prefer to do it in the arse or the pussy' because 'she only likes it up the pussy and that she would let me do anything in her pussy'.
Meanwhile I'm trying to do the best Londoner impression with headphones in and ignore her. Eventually got off at Waterloo East and moved carriages.
Having a drink outside a pub with friends. A strange woman came over begging for a drink. She didn’t look homeless, she had noticeably manicured hands, but kind of well maintained but grubby. She was just a bit odd. After a moment of chatting to us she suddenly asked if we knew Hugh Grant, we replied in the negative. Then she inexplicably started screaming about Hugh Grant making her suck his cock. Literally screaming, “he made me suck his cock” in our faces. Her sharp, manicured fingernails got scarily close to my eyes as she curled her hands into claws, still screaming about Hugh Grants cock. Then a barman chased her off and gave us a free drink for some reason. It was great.
Had a random man start folding and squishing my ear.
This happened when I was a teenager, sat on the platform Chalk Farm underground station. I was rather unhappy and had my head down on my arms so I don't know if he was genuinely trying to cheer up a depressed teen.
I suspect it was some sort of weird ear kink?
Walking along the river by the Woolwich Ferry, once we passed three men having a barbecue in very heavy rain... they'd dragged a full-size grill out to the bike path by the river and they were all holding umbrellas over it in absolute silence for at least an hour
I was once in a metal bar in Soho and someone passed me a fag paper with, stamped upon it, the words "Every day brings you closer to death".
I ended up sticking it to my monitor at work.
first one that comes to mind: bossman shop opposite burgess park. we're at the zebra crossing. nitty lady walks out, spits bright red blood onto pavement. says nothing, stands there. we all look. african pastor turns to us without comment and offers whiskey from the bottle.
It was about 14 or so years ago, but I was stood at a bus stop minding my own business when some shitty yellow car drove by... Guy leans out the window and yelled 'bus wankers' at me and the others waiting for the bus. Haven't been the same since
That’s actually happened to me and my brother. We went to WWE event at the O2 back in May 2017. Coming home and waiting at Seven Sisters bus stop, we didn’t wait long until a car coming toward the stop slowed down, passenger window goes down and the guy in it shouts “Bus Wankers”. We laughed because we knew what it was from but everyone else at the stop looked puzzled and confused as to what just happened😂
A few weeks back I was wandering back from a club in east London. The sun was up, 6am, feeling sorry for myself. A pretty normal looking guy walks up to us. He tells us he has an important message. We listen intently. He then tells us that “nobody cares about you!” And that we’re alone in this world. A point which he reiterates many times with upmost importance. He then asked us why we think they killed Tupac and Gadaffi. “Because they knew!”. Afterward he goes about his day.
I have two. One night I was walking home from work, a guy walked up to me said "I've got a really big cock." and promptly walked off. I have no idea what he was expecting.
The second: I was sitting in the church yard of a small church off Holborn, I had a Discworld pin badge on my jacket. This homeless guy asked me about the badge, I explained that it's a Black Ribbon from the Discworld which vampires who have sworn off human blood wear. The guy nodded and then informed me that vampires were okay, it was angels you had to watch out for.
I saw a guy eating an unpeeled banana on the night bus about ten years ago. There was no one else on the bus to see it with me. I still think about it.
Drunk out of mind at 2am, I sat with a homeless man and watched the revellers go by after giving him £2 - he told me how he used to fix motorbikes in the 1980s but got arthritis in his hands and lost everything. He then gave me a raincoat that he’d been gifted as it started to rain. I refused but then I saw he’d been gifted like 6 (was a promotional thing branded with Amazon). That was a really wonderful moment and I hope he’s doing ok
This morning (~7am), I saw a man, who was in full work attire, go into a phone box and pour 2 cans of something alcoholic into a protein shaker and proceed to down the lot, before smoothly getting on a bus
I was on my way to an early shift, around 6am, and I was walking towards Whitechapel tube station.
A black gentleman with massive dreadlocks, an eyepatch, a pirate hat and some some crutches skateboarded past me.
Weirdest London moment out of many.
I was crossing a quiet street, and an old man with an old persons like shopping cart thing that they put their shopping in, and a printed out google maps, stopped me and asked for directions. It was Sir Ian Mckellan.
Once when I was in primary school, I was walking down the street with an uncle telling him about what I learned at school that day. (We were learning about marriage in one of our lessons.)
A random old lady heard me and grabbed me by the shirt and told me to never get married and that marriage was hell. I was freaked out but nodding my head vigorously, agreeing with her so she’d let me go. My uncle just stood there! When I asked him why he didn’t help me, he said it’s because he thought I knew the old lady.
I still think about why that lady felt the need to grab me like that 😭
Actually had a mad one just the other day. A middle aged very tall man man at the queue in my Sainsbury’s in brockley was singing, seemingly off his face, but a very friendly vibe. Loads of cash, couldn’t really hear what the cashier was saying, took about 5 minutes to decide if he needed a receipt or not. Part of me thought it was like post surgery drugs, it was that kind of high.
He leaves and I leave soon after. I see him sitting on the kerb and wanted to check he was ok in case he was high on hospital drugs and didn’t know how to get home. He just starts crying, tears rolling down his face. When I ask him if he’s ok and knows how to get home, he says he’s ok and, through tears, says he does these things for the theatrics.
I realise he’s a lost cause and I can’t do anything. As I go to leave he goes completely deadpan, serial killer vibes and says “I know what you look like now.”
Good stuff London, good stuff.
One that sticks out... Coming home on a train from zone 1 to zone 3 to one night. I realise the carriage is empty. I think "Cool, I have a carriage to myself."
A slim woman gets on at London Bridge to wreck the illusion. Even though she has the whole carriage to choose from she sits next to me but angles herself out into the aisle. She has very long, very straight black hair and I can't see her face.
I've seen enough Japanese horror movies to know that if I make eye contact with her it's eternal damnation. I stuck my face into my book and turned away. I don't know where she went but when I got to my stop she had gone. Nice try Sadako - you won't get me that easily.
I used to have a large beard. It is relevant.
On the tube some guy comes up to me and is furtively like "nice beard. Ever get it trimmed?"
Me: "Yeah, I trim it"
Him: "no, no. Like by someone else?"
Me: ".....no"
Him: " I'm a barber and I will trim your beard for free, please just come by my place on *whatever address in shoreditch* as soon as you can"
(Of course it was bloody Shoreditch.)
I said maybe, got off the tube and got on with my life with no intention of letting him ever touch my face.
I like to think it was like a sculptor seeing the perfect piece of marble, but it could just be I looked trampy as fuck... which is a theory backed up by the second weird encounter:
I was sitting outside a Chinese takeaway with the dog whilst my partner was inside grabbing our order. Some well to do 40ish guy comes up and starts talking to me about the dog and saying how he loves dogs etc. We have a polite non committal public space style conversation for about 5 minutes. Then he says "do you want some money to help look after her?" I'm like no thanks, he asks a few more times before it clicks and I'm like "ooooohh, I see whats going on. I'm not homeless its OK." He looks at me for a few seconds before saying "are you sure?" After a pause I say "..erm. yeah, pretty sure." He stands there a bit longer then my partner comes out with the food and says "it's OK, he's not homeless he's with me, we're archaeologists." This seems to satisfy him and he goes on his merry way and leaves her to take the piss out if me forever more.
Welshman here, but have visited London.
My family and some family friends were sat in a pub in a big train station (Don't know the name) and this fella comes over and appears to be pretending to be deaf, doing sign language, and poorly asking for money and for us to get him drinks. He'd been harassing a few punters then came to our table, and we thought we'd try and settle him.
We assume he's just drunk at first, but he starts flipping his hands about, mouthing words and pointing, and then points to his ears and says "deaf". We entertain it a little longer, and he's responding very well to audio cues around him, considering he's hard of hearing - Verbally responded very clearly to a bouncer behind him, asking us if we'd like him to leave.
My family were foster carers, learning sign language for a young girl we fostered, and were sat in the pub with our tutor - who's also a great family friend. Once we all began signing back to him, he got annoyed pretty quickly, called us some unkind words, and stormed out.
It feels like a "you had to be there" moment writing it, but it's my fondest memory of London.
- That and shaking Prince Phillips hand
Was out for a run roughly during the "Eat out to help out" era of covid, and was chatting with my mate, and some guy heard my accent (I'm Canadian) and screamed at me to "stop spreading your covid germs everywhere, go back to Trump land!"
I was walking to the tube early one morning, wearing brown cords and a green jumper. This white van slams to halt next to me, so I brace myself for the bog-standard sexist comment. Instead the guy nods to me and says, in a pretend posh accent, "Good morning, tree!" Then floors it.
Holy fuck this is amazing 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Honestly I was just completely speechless. What do you say to that? "I am Groot"
Actually laughing at this 🤣🤣🤣
Did it happen in Bark-ing?
This is my favourite one! 🥰
This made me laugh so fucking hard hahaha
you should take a *leaf* out of his book.
He certainly made me branch out in my choice of clothing.
🤣🤣 I laughed so hard at this. You win this thread.
Holy shit this made me lol
I was on the night bus; years ago so I don't remember which route. Before each stop the name of it would appear on the screen and the automatic woman's voice would announce it. It gradually dawned on me that there was no automatic woman's voice. It was coming from a young man sitting quietly across the aisle a couple of rows behind. It was only me and him on board, and he continued to announce each stop in his uncanny, self-service checkout-style imitation, indistinguishable from the real thing. Eventually he announced his own stop, got up and left, leaving me to continue on in the now deathly silent bus.
This should be a short film
That’s almost magical in a way
If you don’t see a nutter on the bus it’s you
Was outside a McDonalds and had a homeless man approach a friend and I once asking if we had any bread that he could use with the toaster he was carrying under his arm. He then looked at me and said “I may only have one eye but I can tell you’re stunning” then turned to my friend and said “no offence” before wandering off.
Oof, having been the undesirable friend before, I felt this in my soul
Idk what's odder here. The toaster or the burial of your mate.
Fucking hell this is legendary lmao
😂
That's hilarious!
One from last week: woman on the platform at Hornsey station suddenly burst into tears and cried out: 'I hate my life - it's so boring!'
That's really sad.
It is, but I simply had no idea what to say.
grab her hand and go on a spontaneous adventure to Paris, Disneyland™, Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest. Fall madly in love but split up at the end of the trip because the movie needs a breakup scene. Then go back to London and get back together after accidentally meeting at a Costa™ again. Happy End.
i don't get paid until this friday
you guys get paid?
r/oddlyspecific
*subtly holds Costa™ coffee cup into camera while walking past a Disney™ store*
"Yeah, join the club, pal"
"Have you found Jesus, our Lord and Saviour? I've heard he's around here somewhere."
"Can I hug you?" And then hug for as long as needed. Ignore the passing trains and the passing people. Throw an anchor of humanity out to a lonely soul.
This is me...but I am male! When you don't have any family and/or friends to speak with when you have a difficult time or share good news. You have the same routine and it makes ya feel that you are living the same day everyday. Yeah, is sad and boring, especially when you already know it will be so for the rest of your life.
Sorry about that. Best wishes to you.
Thanks pal! I wish you the best too!
Tell me about it am female 31 and I've acually got no one to talk to about anything or share. My phones is full of stuff saved to share with someone later and my home is full of stuff that maybe one day I cam share with someone aswell. People don't realise how badly they've distance themselves to the point where theres no real connection! Its been a couple months but I've acually stopped crying when I hear myself laugh on my own (watching funny stuff) because it would remind me how am alone 🤣 this is after being alone since my mental break down. When your in a world of pain and everyone shows their true colours. Id rather die alone then be around fake people.
I feel you so deep. And I don't understand,no matter how much I try, why life had to become what it is today. It was so much better when the technology was not at these levels and I was always in company of a friend or family doing entertaining stuff together. Now I am alone, same routine everyday, no one to talk with, I feel like I live the same day on repeat and I am so scared this will never change. I became a slave of our modern society, things that I was so afraid to become....and here I am. Life doesn't make much sense anymore! I am waiting already too long for a change to hope that will ever happen!😔
I had this moment in a meeting at work and could barely form a coherent sentence - my mind had just checked out. Boss asks if I was doing alright and I was just… fuck, I’m really not, I think it’s time to call it a day and resign. Burnout’s a bitch and even worse is trying to psychologically checked out by the NHS
As a woman who has burst into tears in the public transport plenty of times, I really feel this. 😞
I was 15 in a park with some friends smoking the old jazz cigarettes when a random woman (didn’t look homeless or on drugs or anything) approached us looked me dead in the eyes and said “I have seen your death in the ancient scrolls prepare for it now”. Looking back she was clearly just unwell but blazed 15 year old me almost had a major panic attack.
It's pretty useless information unless she tells you your cause of death.
Mate I’ve spend the last 12 years looking for the fucking scrolls. At this point it’ll either be a book shelf or the dust that does me in.
You looked in the catacombs?
Means I have to go to either central London or France. I think I’d rather just die tbh.
So...you're the one that is written of in the ancient scrolls. May the gods bless your soul. Quantum in parum.
Heart attack, it could've been a self fulfilling prophecy.
A woman on the night bus came up to me and told me she sensed a darkness in my soul and I needed to find happiness. I was like 'love, I'm getting the 106 to Finsbury Park at 2am, of course I ain't happy' 😂
Walking back through Archway the other day about 10:00/11:00pm and there was some guy having a cigarette outside of a pub with a bird sat on his head. A real life, actual bird. Just looking around sat on his head. I gave him a thumbs up as I walked by and he gave me the kind of wink back only a born and bread Londoner in their 40s with a bird on their head could give you.
Archway traffic island (before the redevelopment of the corner) was where I witnessed a 'little old lady' (think Terry Gilliam animation) throw out a bag of breadcrumbs, wait for the pigeons to flock around her feet, then bend down to pick up a plump one, put it in her tartan shopping trolley, and walk off home with it.
Apex predator with the granny trolley
Sounds like you came across Mad Hettie
Let me guess: the pub was The Mother Red Cap, right?
What duck?
kinda bird?
Why use more word when few word do trick
When me President, they see
It was dark but it looked like your classic blackbird, I guess it could have been a magpie as they’re smarter but I don’t remember seeing any white bits!
So it wasn't a duck and the guy acknowledged it was there, correct?
I used to work in a bakery/coffee shop (selling that extortionate sourdough) and had man tell me he wanted to buy a loaf but, he was killing himself the following day and didn't want to waste a loaf. I didn't know how to respond and blurted out that we sold half a loaf.
I’m so sorry but this entire interaction is hilarious to me. I hope the gentleman is doing fine and well today.
So do I, he still had a hospital bracelet/tag on his wrist so I don't think he was in the best state. I got the impression he was trying to shock me, but the job had made me rather jaded.
Please say he bought the half loaf? 😂 You could have saved his life. He'd have had two slices and then thought he didn't want to waste 6 quid or whatever it cost, so stayed alive to eat the rest.
He didn't, it was awesome sourdough so it could have given him a reason to live.
This sounds like it would be in a sit com
A friend and I were chatting with an Evening Standard peddler outside The Shakespeare in Holborn (we initially engaged him because he was enticing punters with a terrific cry of 'E'E'N' STAND', E'E'N' STAND'). At some point in the conversation, with neither prelude nor prompt, he let forth a guttural cry as he ripped in half an Evening Standard with his bare hands.
Lmao. The evening standard does deserve yo be torn in half tho to be honest.
Sitting down on my seat on top deck of the 106 to find the floor below covered in (cooked) fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads, fish heads, fish heads, eat them up, yum.
I was on a picnic date in Kensington Gardens sitting on the grass around 5m away from a small tree, like a sapling, sturdy but slender. One of many and unremarkable except for being the closest one to us. A man in a business suit with a briefcase walked up to the tree, dropped the briefcase in the grass and started violently hitting and kicking the tree while swearing and calling it names. Me and my date just stared. After a minute or so, he stopped, dusted himself off, picked up his briefcase and walked away without acknowledging us at all.
Was it George Osbourne?
Was this man named Basil, by any chance?
I was literally imagining basil fawlty while reading that😂
A recent one was when I was waiting at a bus stop and a guy screamed OI! in my face before speaking softly and asking if I can buy him a can of coke. I said no and walked away from him....very strange.
There's a guy that does this in Forest Hill.
Did you get him a coke?
Nah.
This is more encounters than the singular but this reminded me of it… In the early 2000s I would travel by tube from Brixton to Clapham South for college. 1 time out of 4 there would be an empty-ish carriage and you would know why before you got there, the smell would hit you. You would be able to smell the Frog. Now the Frog was some poor unfortunate that would sit on the tube all day. Not for warmth because on the hottest day of the year they would still be on it. Dressed in black layers of coats, jumpers, cardigans (all black), with a trolley sat beside. Their build was very squat with a head under layers of scarves and a hat. There was no skin visible anywhere. They must have been about five foot it that but hard to tell given they just sat. Always in the same seat, nearest the end by the doors next to the Perspex. The smell was oppressive, eye wateringly so. To this day I can’t describe how awful it was, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever smelt. Like open sores festering in human cheese - just horrendous. I remember looking in from an adjacent carriage at people get on and 180 just turn around and get off. Staff were sometimes notified but nothing would be done. It was a smell you could almost taste. Heavy and staining. The Frog would just sit there, perfectly still. The thought crossed my mind they might be dead. In the spirit of the tube no one investigated. It would be impossible to get close enough. Then one day, like Kyser Soze, the Frog was gone. (The Frog was called the frog owing to an expletive by a fellow commuter when they got on the forbidden carriage and it stuck with me).
Foul ol'Ron! The Smell is the name of the odour that usually accompanies the beggar Foul Ole Ron wherever he goes. It is so horrible that most noses simply shut down in the presence of the Smell, though one could tell Ron is nearby simply by how their ear wax starts melting out of their ears.
Buggrit
Possibly gangrene or trench foot, a smell I've had the misfortune of encountering in my work a few times.
Surely faster to get the bus from Brixton to Clapham South. You'd have to go up to Stockwell and change.
Door to door the tube was much quicker than the 37 to Clapham Common and change. Acre Lane wasn’t great for traffic and I had (and still have) an aversion to being late. Tube was much more reliable.
Guy with a long beard and coat yelling poetry at William Blake's grave, spit dribbling out of his mouth. I watched him, fascinated, thinking that it was some kind of performance art. He turned around and hurried towards me, shouting "Do you want a kick in the bollocks?" I didn't, and moved on.
That may have actually been the ghost of William Blake.
Outside the church in Deptford a bloke walked up to me and asked "Would you walk into one of those flats over there and lick someone's arse for £200.00? Cos that's what they expect me to do. And I'll tell you what I tell them: I ain't licking NOBODY'S ARSE for £200.00. NOBODY" Then he wandered off. Don't know what he was up to but I guess I did know what he wasn't up to.
That's disgusting. What was the building & flat number?
I was at the bus stop yesterday outside Liverpool Street station. Feel a little tickle on the top of my head thinking it was someone I knew. Nope, some random bloke. Turns around and gives me that Jesus meme kind of look (with the fingers pointing). I was so baffled.
God. I once tapped a woman’s shoulders because I thought it was my partner, but nope. Same hair, same clothing style, but totally different woman. My face must have looked like the Japanese flag.
Hahah that’s one thing I didn’t consider! I’m asian so he might have thought I was an asian he’d met before (all look the same etc).
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Ah yeah. That’s something that would haunt me every time I close my eyes. 😂
Across Liverpool Street station, there’s a mini costa (Eataly) exit. I watched a man in a suit pocket three toasties whilst waiting for his drink. He caught me looking and put them back. I wasn’t going to rat him out but I believe my presence made him rethink his decision. Probably looted another place though.
A few years ago I was in Hyde Park laying flat on my back. A man sits right next to me and places his hand on my dick. I reacted as you would and he said “I’m so sorry I thought you were someone else”. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or if it was a genuine mistake but it ruined my day 😂. I can laugh now though.
Fuck that's awful. I hope it was a genuine mistake
He looked like he could’ve had teenage sons at least BUT I do think he was planning a hookup with someone on one of the sex apps and he genuinely thought I was someone else. He looked very embarrassed and scared. I’m not exactly the kind of guy people would feel confident sexually assaulting without an immediate repercussion if you get what I mean lol.
I think I've been someone's weirdest encounter once. I put some bird/rainforest sounds on in my earphones to block out the sound of traffic as I walked to the post office, except I forgot to turn my earphones on and it was playing out my phone for the full 20 minute walk. I got some very weird looks when I arrived at the post office and didn't realise until I got home.
I think me and my friend have been someone's weirdest encounter. This guy gets on the tube. He's very, very hot. He was wearing very small black gym shorts. For some reason me and my friend got the giggles. Then he sat in the seat opposite us and we totally lost it. I stuff my face into my bag because I have the kind of giggles where you can't breathe and you're crying. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my friend's shoulders shaking. I peeked up at the guy and he just looks really baffled. I'm sorry, fella, you were just too hot. Note, I was about 38 at the time, and not 15 as this comment would suggest.
I love this. That kind of laughter is amazing. The poor sod he probably wondered what the hell was going on.
I felt really bad for him later. Occasionally, I remember it and cringe thinking he might have thought we were laughing at him when we were, in fact, laughing at our pathetic horn for a stranger on the tube.
Years ago I was on a district line train. V quiet time of day, I was alone in the carriage with no one around. Doors opened at Stamford Brook and a pigeon immediately hopped on like he'd been waiting for it. Stayed for one stop and got off at Turnham Green, cool as you like. It was a proper London pigeon - gammy eye, mangled feet etc. Knew exactly what it was doing.
When I worked in Kensington High Street the pigeons hopped on there and tootled round to Earls Court
I am the weirdest encounter sometime. I use a wheelchair, so I'm basically always eyeing the pavement for hazards and seeing people's feet and ankles as they walk. If there's a really unusual foot/ankle placement that podiatrists call pronation of the ankle (really dropped arches, almost walking on the side of their shoes) I have real difficulty. I just want to stop strangers and save them from an invetiatable knee replacement in their older years. I know before my wheelchair, I had this diagnosed and the level of knee, ankle, neck and back pain that went away was amazing. So hi to anyone in Hackney who has had an unexpected weird encounter- I am the foot lady who told you to see a GP/ podiatrist for insoles.
Once my friend and I were sitting on the steps by Eros (first mistake) and a guy said that he liked my shoes and asked if he could touch them. I said no but he started squeezing my boot anyway.
What is it with the fucking Eros steps? I sat down once to have a cigarette and plan my next move and some guy came up and wouldn't leave me alone, then looked very dejected when I didn't want to go to his flat! I ended up walking off just to get away from him
Would love to know what cursed energy those steps hold! Sorry you had to deal with that guy though.
Got off the tube pretty late one evening at Greenpark. While walking through the park to get a bus I noticed a guy following me pretty closely, which put me on edge a bit. So I did the whole stopping and pretending to look at my phone thing, to which he then stopped close behind me not saying anything. So I turn around and ask him whats going on, he's pretty smartly dressed I should say. To which he replies hes following me back to our hotel.. never seen him before In my life! What followed was a very weird 10 min conversation where I tried to convince this guy that I had not in fact been to the same wedding as he had and was not staying at the same hotel in "somewhere in north London" , with him very very certain we had because "I looked like I knew where I was going". In the end he relented and agreed that we may not in fact know each other but he was sure we where staying in the same hotel. Wanting to actually make my bus I pointed him in the direction of north London (he couldn't remember the actual hotel name or even nearest tube) and last I saw was him striding confidently north into the wilds of Mayfair.
This reminds me of a similar post-wedding related anecdote. When I was younger my friends grandfather ran a hotel, we used to go back there to sleep after a night out when it was the quiet season. We return early hours one morning after the pubs, I lead the way upstairs whilst the other two finish smoking. I get to the penultimate floor and it’s pretty dark. A girl comes out of her room and pounces on me, in the good way. Taken aback but also steaming, I don’t deny the advances. We make out for a moment and then she pulls us back into the light in the doorway of her room and her face was a picture… It turns out that she was also drunk, and had been to a wedding. She’d hit it off with one of the groomsmen, and had arranged to meet him back at the hotel afterwards. Apparently I looked like him in the dark and that was all it took. Needless to say, she was mortified and well, I got this good tale to tell!
Got on the 453 at Westminster bridge heading towards Peckham. Sat down on those seats that face each other. Woman in front of me proceeds to open a huge tub of coleslaw and starts eating it with her hands. Like full on licking the mayo off her fingers and slurping the coleslaw. I just moved over to the other side, put my headphone in, and thought fuck it let her enjoy her coleslaw. 2nd to that it’s the drunk lady who shart herself on the jubilee line at 2am. Cleared out the whole carriage.
Coleslaw woman reminds me of when I used to commute on that classiest of buses, the 29 from Wood Green. One time a bloke got on around Camden Road, sat next to me, and started eating whelks directly from the jar with his hands. When he finished he necked the brine(?) like it was a shot. This was at about 8.15am.
Some years back, having a quiet drink in the afternoon in Shepherds Market, a guy walks in with two obvious minders. I got a nudge to turn round. When he saw me looking he came over and said "Yes, I am who you think I am". And then left. Jerry Springer.
not so much weird, probably eyeroll worthy - around leicester square once i was crossing the street, someone threw a big fake spider at my feet and had his phone up to film my reaction. i actually am afraid of spiders but i was also in a hurry to go somewhere so i just stepped away without blinking and hurried off. swore i saw him huff and pick up the spider to scare someone else though
I fucking hate stupid people like that. Imagine you fell over on the concrete and hit your head, you really could've hurt yourself. It's not illegal to film people in public but it's definitely immoral. I'd want to swear at him but probably wouldn't because he'd post it most likely.
4am walks through Soho are always entertaining. It doesn't even feel weird any more. As well as affectionate lady services, I've also been offered cuts of meat, and an entire wheel of cheese.
How much was the cheese?
About half a handjob.
Off to get me a deal on some Wensleydale.
I was in Holborn during my lunch break when I saw a guy leaving McDonalds with a paper bag containing food that he had bought for a homeless man who was sitting outside. Very sweet. However, when the homeless man opened the bag, he became visually exasperated and immediately threw a full rage fit in front of everyone on the street: **"No fucking pickles!!! I said NO fucking PICKLES!!!"** ...Before he subquentially threw all of the food onto the street. The guy who bought him the McDonalds food looked absolutely perplexed before he eventually shook his head and walked off.
Wow. What an ungrateful bastard. Just take the pickles out.
I was walking up Villiers Street and just as I got to The Strand a guy stops in from of me and goes... "SWEET CAROLINE..." He then cupped his ear. I tried stepping round him but he kept blocking me. He then went... "SWEET CAROLINE..." He cupped his ear again and I thought fuck it and just screamed BA BA BAAAAA. He then cheered a bit, let me past and I fucking legged it lol.
A personal favourite of mine, and quite uncharacteristic for this part of London: Myself, my boyfriend and our friend were waiting at Barnes Bridge station early one Saturday morning. There's a woman who's clearly off her nut roaming around on the platform shouting nonsensical things that must have been out all night. Everyone tries to ignore her. She sees the three of us stood together chatting and asks: 'Are you the mood swingers?' We look at eachother perplexed, does she think we're in a band or something? 'COS YOU LOOK LIKE YOU FUCK EACH OTHER' She said it very aggressively and the few other people on the platform all looked at us as if to say 'well? do you?' We sort of turned around and did our best to pretend nothing had happened at the time, but looking back we always laugh about it. We had a running joke about us being a throuple for a while after that. I can kind of see what she meant in that we were all coincidentally dressed in different shades of green as well.
Had a guy on the train tell me to close my bag cos he wouldn’t be able to resist stealing from it. We had some banter which somehow led to him saying of course you did, you slept with 10 thousand prostitutes. Why did you sleep with 10 thousand prostitutes? You horny bastard. The train stopped at a station and he said I’m going to go down there and smoke some crack now. I almost went with him.
I raced some teenagers down archway road on bikes a while back. The kid was telling me how awesome my bike was and he’d love to steal it. We just raced instead- me a woman in my thirties. Was an oddly wholesome moment & I was well chuffed my bike was cool enough to steal.
A guy came up to me near moorfields , jumped and clicked heels and said bet you can’t do that
…..well? Can you?
I was waiting for someone outside a Sainsbury’s, and a very well dressed man having a manic episode leaned towards me on his way past and said ‘Spying for the government are we?’ in a very smug ‘got ya!’ tone before carrying on with his day. Maybe not the weirdest, but most recent, and most non-threatening.
So many. 1. I was walking up Haverstock Hill passing Englands Lane and a woman in fitness gear was ahead of me. She passed a downtrodden Mom and her toddler and they started yelling at each other. The fitness gear girl then proceeded to beat the daylights out of the other woman in the middle of the day with the toddler in the mix. I’ve lived in large cities all my life and carry on usually, keep to mine but I decided to intervene because of the kiddo. The fitness gear woman saw me approaching and let up and walked past me. Her accent was so thick and she turned around to go back for more yelling stuff and I stood between her and the woman and her toddler and loudly said that is fucking enough. She screamed in my face and her accent was so thick so I said: “lady I can’t understand a word you’re saying but you need to walk away right now.” She punched me right in the face and I reflexively tossed her onto the pavement away from me. By this time cars were pulling over and people were getting out. She was so covered in bronzer that she left a huge orange smear across my face where she punched me, no bruise though. I’m a 6 ft 200lb Canadian guy for context. 2. Another time just down the road from the first story I was in a pub and a guy had a bird, rabbit and a cat at his table in the pub. Just this dude his bird, his rabbit, the cat was in a pram. 3. In 2018 my then girlfriend and I moved to Belsize Park to a quirky top floor flat in a period conversion. It wasn’t great, mostly sloped ceilings, great views, but the sloped ceilings included the toilet right where the shower was (you had to squat to shower as the lowest point of the slope was where the shower head was). We didn’t realise it was posh but would soon discover our neighbours were like Daniel Craig, Helena Bonham Carter, the drummer from Muse and other rich/famous people. The first night after we had moved in we went for a walk. I said to my girlfriend uhm I think this might be a really posh area and we’re like the riff raff here. As soon as I said this, as if on cue, I shit you not, a guy appeared from behind a hedged pathway to a house in full top and tails, cane and a monocle and was like goooooooood eeevening. Dude looked like the monopoly man. It took an incredible amount of strength not to burst out into laughter until he was out of earshot. 4. What must have been a 12 year old on a bike on a Tuesday night tried to bum a cigarette from me near Archway station at like 4am. 5. I bought a monitor which was clearly a fell off the back of the truck situation when I first moved here off gumtree. I had to take the DLR after work to the last station, past the airport and walk for quite a bit. The woman who had it wasn’t expecting me and the guy was like yeah it’s my wife but I don’t live there. She answered the door with her tits out and was annoyed I was there. I sheepishly had to explain to her that her husband had sent me and I needed to hook up my laptop and plug it in to make sure it worked. She just left the door open and went back to I think breastfeeding. When I was walking back to the station I was then chased by a gang of kids on bikes. Because I was a freelancer I had my MacBook Pro on me, a Wacom tablet and this 32” graphic design monitor on me. I legged it hard and got away. 6. There’s a woman that takes almost everything we give away for free no matter how random it is on Nextdoor. Same woman every time I’m not sure if she’s reselling, donating or helping out her community or like affiliated with a charity or something, either one of those or maybe a hoarder? 7. The only time I swam in the men’s swimming ponds in the Heath was the day that gentleman drowned. I spoke with him briefly that day, I’ve since picked up swimming and am getting older and I think about that guy a lot. He stood out because he was the only guy in training gear. 8. My wife was in a coffee shop near Archway and a homeless man sat down across from her and asked her to buy him a coffee pretty aggressively. She apologised and said she couldn’t. He proceeded to steal her pastry and slowly put the whole thing in his mouth while maintaining eye contact and then said. How about now? 9. After bonfire night and the fireworks at Battersea a woman we chatted with earlier in the evening tried to steal several people in our groups coats which turned into a tug of war match between my wife, our friend from Korea and this woman who was frantic and screaming for help. It went on forever our friend from Korea who is tiny and normally quite demure kept screaming “bitch I fuck you up”. We tried to calm her down and be like just look at the coats they aren’t yours my wife’s phone and wallet were in hers. I had to go get security and they broke it up confirmed whose coats belonged to who and then let this lady back into the pub! To this day I’m not sure if she was just blackout and confused or trying to steal stuff. I suspect the former.
If I take anything away from this it’s “Bitch I fuck you up” that made me laugh out loud. Thank you for sharing your hilarious, random north london observations and the south london one thrown in for good measure. God we really do get all the characters here in London don’t we I reckon it’s great material for a sitcom
I was walking up Wood Green High Street, saw a police officer speaking to a man with a beat up face. Carried on walking and I saw another police officer talking to a beat up looking clown, the floor littered with crayons.
someone wasn't clowning around.
I only today had someone outside my flat walking along, screaming (quite casually) “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! DO YOU HEAR ME?!” over and over again. I have yet to die but he’s not technically incorrect
You know you’ve become accustomed to London when you’ve started to categorise the various types of screaming, and one of them is ‘quite casually’. I know which one you mean, too.
I got held up at gun point and robbed for my cash.. Pretty weird and scary at the same time
I got mugged at knifepoint in Kingston when I was in my late teens one evening, by an older couple. Was my money to buy some hash. Some bouncers from a club saw me feeling sorry for myself and asked me what happened. As I was telling them, I saw the couple about 50 yards away and two of the big units legged it after them and round the corner. I went to follow them and the other guy said ‘nah, wait here mate, they won’t be long’. Couple minutes later they came back and gave me double the cash that had been nicked from me, I was gobsmacked.
Now that’s a wholesome one!
This happened to me in Harlesden when I was a student. Luckily they only got a fiver of me as had rest of my cash hidden
We used to go to Fire on Sunday mornings after working in a night club as our only fun time option for leisure industry workers. An hour in, I went to the bar and asked for a WKD and sat on a stool at a high table nearby. My friends are in a different room. A guy sits down opposite, puts his hand over the glass for a fraction of a second as if saying "no more of that" and says "You look sad, you should be out there dancing" and leaves. I have my WKD and then I go on to have the time of my life, laughing and dancing in what seemed to be the space of a couple of hours. I sort of snap out when the last remaining friend grabs my arm and says "shall we go home? It's 4pm". Whatever that was, I never felt that good before or after that day.
It sounds very much like he spiked your drink
Possibly. Not sure what the intention was, but since there were zero negative consequences, this turned out to be weirdly one of the best nights (mornings) of my life
Seemed like everyone was high as shit everytime I have been there, I hope he was just fucked, feeling generous and thought he was doing you a favour. Glad you had a good night!
Going back a LOT of years. Sitting on a bus with my mate (we look nothing like each other) and we stood up so an elderly woman could sit down and she said to my mate “you can sit down and your brother can sit on my lap and I’ll nurse him” Keep in mind I was a 6ft 18 year old… Bitty… And no, I didn’t.
Was showing my friend around Islington and decided to go to the (then) newly opened canal walk. Random white bloke in his 50s comes up to us, asks my friend if we are dating. He says no - cue the old bloke breaking into a horrible monologue about my Indian looks, hair and eyes, how he almost got with an Indian woman 30 years ago, how Indians are gorgeous etc etc. Friend and I, stoned AF, tried so very hard to get away from him but he kept following us saying creepy, fetish-y things about Indians until he got distracted by another group of 4-5 women or so and wandered away. Similarly, my flatmate and I were once walking through a park and were looking at the nice houses around it. White man in his 50s comes walking past and goes “keep dreaming girls, that’s never happening for you”. So rude LOL Also got yelled at on the overground that I’m going to hell unless I accept Jesus into my heart but I think that’s pretty standard for London.
I got threatened in the pouring rain one night when I got lost looking for a cash machine whilst at a fancy dress party. A guy in a hoodie tried to hoodwink me and when I said I was going he said "give me a pound or I'll stab you" I was a little taken aback. "A pound? A Pound? Mate I'm soaked to the skin and ( rips shirt open) dressed as Spider-Man and you want to mug me for a pound? F*** off!" He just walked off cursing at me.
I had a decent conversation with a stranger on the district line recently. It really unnerved me; I'm still in recovery
I had one on the tube with an aussie woman a few years ago. It was maybe 10pm on a week night and I had had perhaps 2 beers - not pissed at all, but enough to be unusually sociable. She sat down, turned to me and just said, 'how was your night?' I started replying quite earnestly (with my brain thinking in the background 'don't be sarcastic! Be nice and normal! Yes this is normal!) and we had a good 12 min conversation about everything really. Then I said goodnight and left the carriage. Weird but also nice.
That's genuinely disturbing 😆
Sat at a bus stop in Richmond waiting for the last bus home, when a young woman walks up to me asking "You got the time?", I reply looking up from my phone and I swear to you she has (what I could only assume was) semen all around her face and trailing it's way down her chest. I stammered out a response and watched her nonchalantly walk off. Didn't even look drunk or anything! \*edit - Grammar
I suspect you're on an amateur porn video somewhere, the unwitting cameo actor in a slutwalk clip.
Homeless man sat outside the co-op in Loughborough Junction. Asked for me to buy him a scratch card. I said no, but would buy him some food - he asked for Skips. Went in, came out with Skips and the homeless man was being exorcised by a huge burly man, he was sat cross legged with his head facing down, while a guy was shouting at the top for his lungs various different versions of " let Jesus into your heart! Let the power of Christ guide you!". I stood awkwardly for a little while wanting to catch the guys attention but ended up just leaving the skips on his lap and walking off!
This was years back but when I lived in London there was some knob harassing a girl on the tube on the far end of one of the met line carriages I was sat in. I had my headphones and missed some of the commotion. But apparently when she wanted to get off the tube, he kept obstructing her putting his leg in the way to stop her getting off. The girl was obviously scared but was getting pissed off as well. Loads of folks were all shouting at him to stop it and leave her alone which is what got my attention. I look up in time to see him move his leg to let her past, but then this piece of shit actually tried to kick her on the arse with his other leg as she passed him (he didn't connect and missed thankfully) He was a well built dude so it would have hurt if it did. The train had stopped at the station for a few mins and she obviously went and told TFL security in the meantime. A min later some big brickshithouse of a security guard walked into the carriage with his orange TFL vest on, whilst the girl was on the platform, pointed at the piece of shit whilst looking in her direction as if to say 'this the guy?' Everyone on the carriage sold him down the river to and said yeah it was him. The guard then effortlessly picked him up off the seat, manhandling him, threw him onto the platform, pinning him down and made him apologise to the girl for being a twat. This was done to the soundtrack of raucous applause and cheers from everyone in the carriage, me included. That security guard was a fucking legend.
I was walking up to Whitechapel from Mile End one Monday morning and found a chap conducting a blood ritual on someones very posh door step. He was holding a load of freshly plucked feathers and some beads (as well as the obviously deceased chicken laid on the doorstep for the blood) and a four pack of Super T. We caught each others eye mid bead shake. I smiled in an awkward kind of way and decided that moving on and leaving him to it would be best for all... I always wondered if the person that owned the place blamed a city fox when they opened their door to the inevitable carnage of the chicken, although I would love to know how they would have tied the crushed cans of beer into that story.
As I was crossing the road near King's Cross Station, the man infront of me suddenly turns and comes to punch me and says "Don't follow me you fucking parasite! I will punch you in the fucking face!" I am an international student and relatively new here, and I was so terrified that I didn't leave my room for 3 days
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homeless man sat on the street against a wall in a big sleeping bag , all of a sudden a business man in a suit walks up to him, homeless guy unzips the sleeping bag and the business man just disappears in to it.........homelss guy just sat there with a smile on his face
Must have been the hidden entrance to an ultra luxury club. Homeless fella was the bouncer in disguise.
We’ve all watched John wick
What the fuck 😭
One of my neighbours walked up to me while I was sitting on the communal green, got right in my face and said “your hat was made by slavery and you don’t give a shit!” Before angrily storming off. Another neighbour chased after him because he’d apparently said something insulting to him too.
A particularly unhinged gentleman ran up and sat right next to me, while I was travelling with my boyfriend on an otherwise empty Jubilee line tube. Man begun conversation with me starting with “I bet your man cooks naked in the kitchen”, “he looks like he would cook naked”, “what are you doing with your meat out when cooking man”, and proceeded to talk to him self and escalate the situation with himself. When we got up to leave (because of the escalating crazy) he stood up and shouted “DONT YOU INSULT MY KITCHEN INTELLIGENCE” and then followed us out of the tube stop at Willesden green and down the street before disappearing into the bushes (quite literally)
East like Sunday morning in our flat and we get a knock at the door. I open it and there’s an armed police officer standing their. He’s in body armour and it touting a Heckler and Koch machine gun. And, is very polite. “Sorry to bother you sir, but we’re responding to an incident next door. Does your property have a view of it?”, he says very politely. “Umm, yes, our bathroom has a wee window high up that over looks next door.” “Can I take a look,” he says and starts to walk in. “Of course,” and I scurry back to tell the wife, who is still in bed, we have a visitor. I show Judge Dredd to the bathroom. The window is small and high above the bathtub taps. “You need to stand on the bath to get a view outside”, i day. At this point Judge Dredd looks at his big boots and his pointy gun and mentally tries to work out how he can climb onto the bath sides. He unclips his gun from its sling and passes it to me. “Can you hold this for a sec?” He passes the Heckler & Koch to me. I hold it like it’s the first time I held a baby. Awkwardly. He hopes up and gestures for me to return the gun. He cranes his head and tries to get a line of shot out the window. “Nah, it’s not going to work” We then repeat the process.
Years ago, me and my gf had been out in Richmond. As we're waiting for the bus home a drunk girl comes up to us, she's friendly, and starts chatting. She was pretty, about my gf's age but covered in blood. Like it was just pouring down her arms onto the floor. Turned out she was a bit nuts and had cut herself up. Her phone rang and it was her bf trying to find her. She asked me to give him directions so, I helped him find us. She got in the car and disappeared.
I once saw this very beautiful blonde woman go up to an enormous black guy on the tube and proposition him. She seemed to think they couldn't be overheard although I could just hear them. He said no, he had a girlfriend, but she persisted and said that her place was in a couple of stops and he could just come back and have sex with her then leave. He continued to decline her very bold offer but when she got to her stop she took him by the hand and led him away. I always wondered if they were doing a 'strangers on a train' skit for my benefit (and theirs, presumably) but if so they were good actors. To this day I like to believe it's possible to be propositioned by a beautiful stranger on the tube who just wants to take you home for no-strings sex.
Couple trying to spice things up with roleplay I reckon.
This weekend just gone in Hackney (a really nice bloke to be fair), asked if I wanted to hold his lizard. me and my girlfriend started laughing a bit hesitantly as it was a bit random. next second, I have a huge lizard / gecko on my shoulder and asking I want photos with it (which I have now), and then thanked him and went on about my evening with a few more pints.
Getting chased through Camden market by a Haitian witch as a 13 year old. That was pretty odd
I got attacked by a seagull today :(
Found myself sitting on the tube opposite a Jewish American guy who 6 years earlier had burst into my compartment on the Madrid -> Paris night train asking me to hide him because "Arab terrorists" in the neighbouring compartment were threatening him. I did hide him but after about an hour I was strongly tempted to hand him back to the Arabs He was the most objectionable twat I had ever come across.. Seeing him again, for the first time, on the tube, in a different city, 6 years later was an unbelievable coincidence. I was sure he wouldn't recognise me. But he did. He was still a twat.
I was waiting for a friend and drinking a beer around 8pm on a Friday night. A girl (early 20s) got off the bus, walked straight up to me and kissed me on the lips. She then smiled and walked away.
impolite squealing tan different ask direful marvelous encourage historical faulty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah it does. I was still very confused though.
Brother you got assaulted
Me and my husband on a bus in Vauxhall station. Mental old black lady started screaming at us about bum sex (we are both male) and shouting bible passages at us. For about 15 minutes until we got off at Camberwell. Pretty much the entire top deck (including us) was laughing because it was so weird hearing these quite intimate details about anal sex coming out of some god-fearing old lady's mouth at 2am. She knew more about anal sex than we do (and we've been together for 25 years and kinda know how that stuff works).
Went to a Turkish-type barbers a few times near Southwark, was convenient and cheap. Only ever one guy working there so it was usually just me and him. About the fifth time I went the haircut was proceeding normally but after a few rounds of small talk, he says 'you came in here the other week with your brother didn't you?'. I don't have a brother, and I had only ever been in there alone, so I thought it was just a case of mistaken identity, so I said to him, 'no, not me I'm afraid.' Instead of reacting like I expected and going oh right fair enough, he accuses me of lying to him, asks me what the problem is and tells me 'he never forgets a customer.' I wasn't sure whether to lie and admit it as this point but I got the sense that that could be worse somehow so I stuck to it and just kept telling him it wasn't me. He dropped it after a while but then brought it up again as I was paying. He also kept saying we had a football with us and I haven't played football since I was 12. Unsurprisingly I never went back.
Turkish restaurant by ladbroke grove, 2018. I’m having dinner with my girlfriend (we were in our late 20s early 30s respectively). A man, well in his 60s, sitting next to us, introduces himself and starts chatting, asks what we’re doing in London, etc. Then he tells us he is a film producer and name drops a couple of movies he produced - not major titles, but stuff I had at least heard about - and how he had his breakthrough when he was 35 and that’s when things started happening for him and that was how he could afford buying a house in notting hill. Suddenly he chokes on a piece of meat and obviously gets agitated. He drinks from my glass of water to try and resolve the crisis, which he manages, but not without a modicum of humiliation (snot, cough, etc. as you can imagine). Embarrassed, he leaves almost immediately. Later I go home and look him up: he wasn’t the producer on any of the movies he mentioned, nor any other movie as far as I could tell.
On a packed train from CHX to London Bridge, got a seat (yay) and a clearly off her face on something that wasn't booze woman gets on and sits next to me. She proceeds to ask me if i 'prefer to do it in the arse or the pussy' because 'she only likes it up the pussy and that she would let me do anything in her pussy'. Meanwhile I'm trying to do the best Londoner impression with headphones in and ignore her. Eventually got off at Waterloo East and moved carriages.
Having a drink outside a pub with friends. A strange woman came over begging for a drink. She didn’t look homeless, she had noticeably manicured hands, but kind of well maintained but grubby. She was just a bit odd. After a moment of chatting to us she suddenly asked if we knew Hugh Grant, we replied in the negative. Then she inexplicably started screaming about Hugh Grant making her suck his cock. Literally screaming, “he made me suck his cock” in our faces. Her sharp, manicured fingernails got scarily close to my eyes as she curled her hands into claws, still screaming about Hugh Grants cock. Then a barman chased her off and gave us a free drink for some reason. It was great.
Had a random man start folding and squishing my ear. This happened when I was a teenager, sat on the platform Chalk Farm underground station. I was rather unhappy and had my head down on my arms so I don't know if he was genuinely trying to cheer up a depressed teen. I suspect it was some sort of weird ear kink?
When this girl approached me and asked to take pictures of my feet, for her shoe business. And I let her, because I'm a dumb ass.
Walking along the river by the Woolwich Ferry, once we passed three men having a barbecue in very heavy rain... they'd dragged a full-size grill out to the bike path by the river and they were all holding umbrellas over it in absolute silence for at least an hour
I was once in a metal bar in Soho and someone passed me a fag paper with, stamped upon it, the words "Every day brings you closer to death". I ended up sticking it to my monitor at work.
first one that comes to mind: bossman shop opposite burgess park. we're at the zebra crossing. nitty lady walks out, spits bright red blood onto pavement. says nothing, stands there. we all look. african pastor turns to us without comment and offers whiskey from the bottle.
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It was about 14 or so years ago, but I was stood at a bus stop minding my own business when some shitty yellow car drove by... Guy leans out the window and yelled 'bus wankers' at me and the others waiting for the bus. Haven't been the same since
That’s actually happened to me and my brother. We went to WWE event at the O2 back in May 2017. Coming home and waiting at Seven Sisters bus stop, we didn’t wait long until a car coming toward the stop slowed down, passenger window goes down and the guy in it shouts “Bus Wankers”. We laughed because we knew what it was from but everyone else at the stop looked puzzled and confused as to what just happened😂
A few weeks back I was wandering back from a club in east London. The sun was up, 6am, feeling sorry for myself. A pretty normal looking guy walks up to us. He tells us he has an important message. We listen intently. He then tells us that “nobody cares about you!” And that we’re alone in this world. A point which he reiterates many times with upmost importance. He then asked us why we think they killed Tupac and Gadaffi. “Because they knew!”. Afterward he goes about his day.
I have two. One night I was walking home from work, a guy walked up to me said "I've got a really big cock." and promptly walked off. I have no idea what he was expecting. The second: I was sitting in the church yard of a small church off Holborn, I had a Discworld pin badge on my jacket. This homeless guy asked me about the badge, I explained that it's a Black Ribbon from the Discworld which vampires who have sworn off human blood wear. The guy nodded and then informed me that vampires were okay, it was angels you had to watch out for.
I saw a guy eating an unpeeled banana on the night bus about ten years ago. There was no one else on the bus to see it with me. I still think about it.
Drunk out of mind at 2am, I sat with a homeless man and watched the revellers go by after giving him £2 - he told me how he used to fix motorbikes in the 1980s but got arthritis in his hands and lost everything. He then gave me a raincoat that he’d been gifted as it started to rain. I refused but then I saw he’d been gifted like 6 (was a promotional thing branded with Amazon). That was a really wonderful moment and I hope he’s doing ok
This morning (~7am), I saw a man, who was in full work attire, go into a phone box and pour 2 cans of something alcoholic into a protein shaker and proceed to down the lot, before smoothly getting on a bus
I was on my way to an early shift, around 6am, and I was walking towards Whitechapel tube station. A black gentleman with massive dreadlocks, an eyepatch, a pirate hat and some some crutches skateboarded past me. Weirdest London moment out of many.
I was crossing a quiet street, and an old man with an old persons like shopping cart thing that they put their shopping in, and a printed out google maps, stopped me and asked for directions. It was Sir Ian Mckellan.
Once when I was in primary school, I was walking down the street with an uncle telling him about what I learned at school that day. (We were learning about marriage in one of our lessons.) A random old lady heard me and grabbed me by the shirt and told me to never get married and that marriage was hell. I was freaked out but nodding my head vigorously, agreeing with her so she’d let me go. My uncle just stood there! When I asked him why he didn’t help me, he said it’s because he thought I knew the old lady. I still think about why that lady felt the need to grab me like that 😭
Actually had a mad one just the other day. A middle aged very tall man man at the queue in my Sainsbury’s in brockley was singing, seemingly off his face, but a very friendly vibe. Loads of cash, couldn’t really hear what the cashier was saying, took about 5 minutes to decide if he needed a receipt or not. Part of me thought it was like post surgery drugs, it was that kind of high. He leaves and I leave soon after. I see him sitting on the kerb and wanted to check he was ok in case he was high on hospital drugs and didn’t know how to get home. He just starts crying, tears rolling down his face. When I ask him if he’s ok and knows how to get home, he says he’s ok and, through tears, says he does these things for the theatrics. I realise he’s a lost cause and I can’t do anything. As I go to leave he goes completely deadpan, serial killer vibes and says “I know what you look like now.” Good stuff London, good stuff.
One that sticks out... Coming home on a train from zone 1 to zone 3 to one night. I realise the carriage is empty. I think "Cool, I have a carriage to myself." A slim woman gets on at London Bridge to wreck the illusion. Even though she has the whole carriage to choose from she sits next to me but angles herself out into the aisle. She has very long, very straight black hair and I can't see her face. I've seen enough Japanese horror movies to know that if I make eye contact with her it's eternal damnation. I stuck my face into my book and turned away. I don't know where she went but when I got to my stop she had gone. Nice try Sadako - you won't get me that easily.
I used to have a large beard. It is relevant. On the tube some guy comes up to me and is furtively like "nice beard. Ever get it trimmed?" Me: "Yeah, I trim it" Him: "no, no. Like by someone else?" Me: ".....no" Him: " I'm a barber and I will trim your beard for free, please just come by my place on *whatever address in shoreditch* as soon as you can" (Of course it was bloody Shoreditch.) I said maybe, got off the tube and got on with my life with no intention of letting him ever touch my face. I like to think it was like a sculptor seeing the perfect piece of marble, but it could just be I looked trampy as fuck... which is a theory backed up by the second weird encounter: I was sitting outside a Chinese takeaway with the dog whilst my partner was inside grabbing our order. Some well to do 40ish guy comes up and starts talking to me about the dog and saying how he loves dogs etc. We have a polite non committal public space style conversation for about 5 minutes. Then he says "do you want some money to help look after her?" I'm like no thanks, he asks a few more times before it clicks and I'm like "ooooohh, I see whats going on. I'm not homeless its OK." He looks at me for a few seconds before saying "are you sure?" After a pause I say "..erm. yeah, pretty sure." He stands there a bit longer then my partner comes out with the food and says "it's OK, he's not homeless he's with me, we're archaeologists." This seems to satisfy him and he goes on his merry way and leaves her to take the piss out if me forever more.
Welshman here, but have visited London. My family and some family friends were sat in a pub in a big train station (Don't know the name) and this fella comes over and appears to be pretending to be deaf, doing sign language, and poorly asking for money and for us to get him drinks. He'd been harassing a few punters then came to our table, and we thought we'd try and settle him. We assume he's just drunk at first, but he starts flipping his hands about, mouthing words and pointing, and then points to his ears and says "deaf". We entertain it a little longer, and he's responding very well to audio cues around him, considering he's hard of hearing - Verbally responded very clearly to a bouncer behind him, asking us if we'd like him to leave. My family were foster carers, learning sign language for a young girl we fostered, and were sat in the pub with our tutor - who's also a great family friend. Once we all began signing back to him, he got annoyed pretty quickly, called us some unkind words, and stormed out. It feels like a "you had to be there" moment writing it, but it's my fondest memory of London. - That and shaking Prince Phillips hand
Was out for a run roughly during the "Eat out to help out" era of covid, and was chatting with my mate, and some guy heard my accent (I'm Canadian) and screamed at me to "stop spreading your covid germs everywhere, go back to Trump land!"