The gibbon story

I was walking through back streets of Bethnal late one night when out of the corner of my eye I saw a gibbon, slumped rather contentedly against the railings at the side of the road, and in the instant that it took for me to shift focus to that point I imagined how he had arrived there.
It began early that morning, in London Zoo in Regents Park. The primate warden had been doing the early morning feeding rounds as usual, only this time he was a little distracted as he had finally managed to get the penguin warden in to bed that night, something he had been trying to do since her first day at the zoo 4 years ago. So this morning he was chipper and happy, whistling as he worked and in a constant reverie about the future and the new prospects that it held. So pre-occupied was he that as he entered the Gibbon enclosure to hide bits of fruit around their cage that he didn't notice the catch not closing as he went in through the back door from the feeding room, as did one particularly observant young male Gibbon affectionately known as Bart, due to his pernicious nature. More out of curiosity than any intent of escape Bart quickly hopped over to the open door, sniffed and peeked around the corner before scurrying through into the large, brightly lit white-walled kitchen area where his, and all his friends, and all his cousins' food was prepared. As the light was so bright it made Bart feel dizzy, so he quickly followed his nose to the fresh air across the room coming from the cat flap in the main entrance, ducked through the see-through plastic curtain and felt grass beneath his feet for the first time ever.
As I have said, Bart really wasn't trying to escape. But as he sat there looking around at the huge spaces around him, seemingly infinite possibilities of adventure entered his mind, and he scampered off to begin realising them. Within the first 10 minutes of his liberty he saw countless new things, beasts, plants and birds of all shapes, sizes and stenches, with a cacophony of sounds ranging right across his hearing's range of frequencies, and any weaker monkey would have probably fainted with the overload of input, but not Bart. His single-mindedness kept him focussed on the next new thing, the next adventure, and he was soon out of the Zoo and in the biggest, most open green field he had ever seen, far bigger than anything he could have imagined whilst fenced-in in that cage. With a slight sense of bewilderment at the task of crossing this emerald expanse he set off, past young human couples rolling around in a drunken sun-rise, and great panting dogs pulling humans along on leather straps, as though the humans were too lazy to walk themselves. Before too long he reached a hedgerow and a fence, and as he popped through the bars in the fence with an enjoyable ease he saw his first road, complete with a steady stream of cars, vans and trucks. For the first time in his short life Bart was struck with a sense of true, primal fear, and any weaker monkey would have died on the spot, if not turned right around and ran back to the sanctity of the cage. But not our Bart. He took a quick breath, gathered his wits, and hopped along side the moving metal wall, following its direction, until they all stopped moving at what seemed to him as a small red sun floating in the air, at which point he hurried across, underneath the bellies of these metallic leviathans. Once across he decide to continue in the way he had just been going, as there seemed to be more humans that way and he knew humans, and wanted to watch them in the same way they had been watching him since as long as he could remember. So he made his way into Camden town and began some serious people-watching.
Now, in the wild, many primates have learned to sniff-out fermenting fruit that lies in shaded spots on the jungle floors, as when they consume it they get drunk, and who doesn't enjoy getting drunk? Of course, Bart had never enjoyed this particular monkey-treat, but if you've ever been to Camden then you'll know that you don't need a monkey's sense of smell to catch a whiff of the cheap-cider that seems to flow through the gutters, and before too long Bart's inherent senses took hold and he found a discarded, half-full can of White Lightning at the foot of the little, half-dead tree he had been observing these strange creatures from. Carrying it back up with him he sat back in the crux of the branch he had spent the last happy few hours and began to enjoy them even more, as the sickly sweet but delightfully intoxicating fluid glided down his little monkey throat. It didn't take much for Bart to become a rather drunken monkey. In fact before he had even finished his first ever half-can it slipped from his grasp as he gestured at a passing leather jacket, and in a vain attempt to catch it he sent himself tumbling down after it, at which point the leather jacket stopped, and while laughing with the girl next to him stooped down and picked up our pissed friend, and Bart began the second stage of his adventure with humanity.
Somewhat unfortunately for our little hero the couple that picked him up in Camden were, you could say, 'in to drugs' in a rather casual but frequent way. They smoked a lot of weed, and drank a lot of booze, and most days would add something else to the mix, be it uppers or downers or trips or, well anything else really. Today though, at least in the afternoon when they came across Bart, they were confined to the weed and the whiskey. Jumping in a taxi they dragged him off to their friend's flat in Islington, where he quickly became the centre of attention being fed a horrible, hot smelly smoke from a big plastic pipe, and small glasses of an evil tasting brown liquid that burned his throat as it went down, and as the day progressed in this manner Bart's senses became duller and duller, the room span more and more, and he eventually came to the conclusion that fight wasn't going to work, so flight it must be. As his companions were almost as inebriated as he was it wasn't too hard for him to stumble across to the window unnoticed, and he scrambled up and out, onto a thin ledge about 30 feet above the hard concrete below. Normally this would have been no problem for an ape of Bart's climbing ability, but drunk as he was now he botched the climb down right up, and ended up tumbling the final few feet into a scraped-up bundle at the bottom. Un-perturbed and still drunk he stood up, shook himself off and walked, somewhat sidey-ways, along the pavement into the darkening evening.
Before too long he found himself at a small shelter under which a collection of humans were stood silently next to each other. A long, red metal machine approached them all and stopped, with a door opening. Bart followed the humans as they entered the door, and was presently zooming along towards Shoreditch feeling rather sick. In fact his sickness grew so rapidly that he jumped off the bus as soon as the doors opened again, ran to the first dark corner he found and evacuated his little monkey bowels with great force. Once he had finished he was feeling rather worse for wear, and frankly starting to miss his cage, his friends and his family. He stumbled bedraggledly along, leaning against the wall to prevent himself falling on the cold, hard concrete, until he found a well-lit junction, complete with multiple sets of pretty changing lights, and leaning against a fence on the corner Bart watched the varying sparkles and drifted off into a drunken doze. That is when I saw him.
But really, as I shifted focus so that Bart was no longer in the corner of my vision, I realised that he was in fact a simple, black and white striped, bell-shaped metal bollard, common to that part of town.

The running man

I met a man the other day who looked liked he was running really fast, but he was moving really slowly. It took me a long time to be able to understand what he was saying, as it took him such a long time to say it, but it turned out that in fact he just saw time differently from the rest of us.
He had been born in Northern Africa six million, five hundred and seven thousand, six hundred and thirty eight years ago, and had basically been running north ever since. He was definitely human, though when I looked hard I noticed some slight differences in his appearance; deep-set eyes, a sloping forehead, all-round hairiness. He was also wrapped in bear-furs, though they were so worn they had an appearance of modern patent leather.
He described to me how as he ran trees would explode out of the ground around him, he could witness the whole life-span of creatures of all descriptions as he passed. He had been in a huge fertile plain when he got caught in a vast, violent flooding that left him swimming across the rest of what we now call the Mediterranean sea. He had seen countless cultures, civilisations and eventually empires rise and fall, heard thousands of different ideas on how we got here, who and why we are, and seen the most beautiful works of art created and destroyed. He had experienced the very best and very worst of humanity through infinite wars and recoveries. Most recently he had been struck by the rapid growth of our own huge stone, metal and glass structures, and I think I saw a tear beginning to form in his eye as he remembered the earth he used to know.
It wasn't a short meeting; I spent the best part of a day with this man though we travelled about a metre and a half in that time, and I've related all he told me.