A Portrait of the Slippy

You see them by the south bank, jeans slung low, caps pushed back, hair cut shaggy. Their skills inversely proportional to their presentation. One sunrat on the left, barely in a string vest, is proving particularly fly, like someone has nailed the skateboard to his feet and banned him from gravity. The rest of them? I’m not so sure. The whole demeanor of these concrete surf monkeys is lackadaisical to say the least. They pull tricks like crackers in a retirement home, the idea of landing one as foreign as the hot dog sellers. It’s a curious mix of adolescent terror at being seen to care, and a healthy English repression of any display of skill or achievement. These drop-out idols have combined these two forces of indifference into a pursuit with all the energy of a mackerel fillet, and for their lack of efforts have somehow been rewarded with the worship of a hundred walk-by tourists. Where are my rollerblades?