From The Times:
He looks oddly mal-coordinated. He has pigeon toes and big feet and walks with a cartoonish dopiness. His arms don’t synchronise and he’s got that eternally cheap cotton suit and shapeless flasher’s mac with the final style addition of a girl’s rucksack.
Altogether with his little head bent forward he looks like an oversized special needs kid.
The reaction to Ken in the street is muted. After-office drinkers look up without interest, occasionally someone yells. It’s difficult to tell if they’re being encouraging or ironic. There are plenty of shouts of “******”.
Ken waves and every so often a drunk lad will come up and ask him to fix their lives, the buses or the weather. He promises to do what he can. Facts and figures tumble out of him with alacrity – if not conviction. He’s like an automated phone system. Press one for bendy buses and Boris; press two for immigration and the Olympics; press three for gay and lesbian issues; stay on the line for a smooth operator.
Except he isn’t that smooth any more. There’s something about Ken’s whole demeanour that looks beaten. He’s losing from the inside out. He was always a grey man, the Stalinist version of John Major with a whiny south London accent. But now there’s a weariness, an absence of enthusiasm.
He looks oddly mal-coordinated. He has pigeon toes and big feet and walks with a cartoonish dopiness. His arms don’t synchronise and he’s got that eternally cheap cotton suit and shapeless flasher’s mac with the final style addition of a girl’s rucksack.
Altogether with his little head bent forward he looks like an oversized special needs kid.
The reaction to Ken in the street is muted. After-office drinkers look up without interest, occasionally someone yells. It’s difficult to tell if they’re being encouraging or ironic. There are plenty of shouts of “******”.
Ken waves and every so often a drunk lad will come up and ask him to fix their lives, the buses or the weather. He promises to do what he can. Facts and figures tumble out of him with alacrity – if not conviction. He’s like an automated phone system. Press one for bendy buses and Boris; press two for immigration and the Olympics; press three for gay and lesbian issues; stay on the line for a smooth operator.
Except he isn’t that smooth any more. There’s something about Ken’s whole demeanour that looks beaten. He’s losing from the inside out. He was always a grey man, the Stalinist version of John Major with a whiny south London accent. But now there’s a weariness, an absence of enthusiasm.
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