Jesus On A Stick | London

The stench of gasoline, buttered corn and perfume intoxicate the olfactory senses. Hundreds of different languages, the grind of traffic and the occasional ranting of a preacher assaulting the ears. The turmoil of Oxford Circus.

The crowds push into Selfridges from the queue at the door that gradually reaches the commuters and shoppers culminating at Bond Street Tube – every entrance a maddening rush of people. Dark colours dominate the streets, monochrome most common at the doors of London College of Fashion just metres from Oxford Station Tube, patterns, prints, and whites in frills of man made fibres run for the doors of Top Shop. And there he is. A face full of small lines, his bored, unsatisfied expression adorned with a shaggy grey moustache and lit by a neon yellow waistcoat meant to ward off traffic and other demons. He holds the one expression befitting such a behemoth of a road and all its denizens.

Jesus on a stick.

Or perhaps “Holy Fuck”, or whatever your current taste in expletive-ridden, heretical gasps of amazement are. A phrase that swims in the seas of the linguistically bizarre – meant only as an expression to convey our shock.

“I am amazed.”

Preachers yelling “Receive Jesus”, the human billboard man of last century telling several generations about the correlation between lust and proteins and the Jesus on a Stick man, walking amongst the gods of capitalism.

All selling Jesus from Oxford Circus to Camden.