‘The body is…an extraordinary laboratory of possibility.’

Anthony Gormley

One sunny September Saturday I left

the Welcome Collection’s airy reading room,

stopped at the Picasso mural then took

the wide circular staircase past floors of

exemplary, aesthetic exhibits

of grave clothes, dentist drills, tranquillisers,

body parts, through the café and bookshop

into Euston Road’s fumy hugger-mugger.

I heard the siren first, behind me, saw

the traffic, past Euston towards St Pancras,

begin to slow as one of Great Ormond Street’s

acute care ambulances barrelled

down the outside lane then suddenly swerved

through an emergency services gap

in the central barrier and drove towards

the three lanes of oncoming vehicles

paused at the lights where the ambulance

would turn right – and I paused, amidst London’s

extravagant roar, moved by all this

for such a little life.