‘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.
By David Selzer