It’s not in Oxford – it’s not a circus. All those people dressed in bright tartan trousers, they’re not clowns. They’ve just been to the nearby Golf Sale. You know, the Golf Sale. No one seems to know exactly where it is, it’s there somewhere. There’s always this guy on the street outside the station holding a big signboard with Golf Sale written in florescent letters and a giant arrow underneath pointing vaguely southwards down Regent Street. Except when he faces the other way and it points westwards toward Bond Street. You don’t see any jugglers or magic acts. Except for mothers with pushchairs, juggling their hectic lives whilst performing the magic act of crossing the busy road whilst pushing the buggy, taking a phone call, and simultaneously spotting a bargain in the window of Benetton. That guy in the tracksuit hurdling the barrier, he’s not a trapeze artist, though he leaps like one. He’s just shoplifted a pair of trainers from Nike Town. The security guard chasing behind him is too fat, too slow. Too many doughnuts. Slim elegant types with beards might look like ladies, but really they’re just hipsters heading east. No tents or high-tops either, only the odd pop-up restaurant in disused shops. The homeless folk sleeping in doorways must have fallen from whatever tightrope they were walking. A sports car trundles along 2mph, it’s a lion, tamed by the traffic.