Star Wars versus Superman

He stood there, perched, waiting for the feeling of the edge of the building under the balls of his feet. It would almost be like diving into the deep end of a swimming pool, he told himself. The terrible churning way down in his stomach filled him with the reality that this was much more final. It wasn’t as difficult as he had imagined to get up there, he just darted through the polished reception, rode the lift to the twenty-fifth floor and then ducked and dived people’s gaze through the final three floors to the roof.

Over the road Hyde Park sprawled lazily into the distance. He tried to concentrate on it, fool himself into calmness but vertigo kicked at his consciousness, spiralling the world below. He could just make out a man running along with a kite, his wife and daughter standing watching as it soared into the air. All of the figures swung nauseatingly in and out of focus.

He looked straight down the twenty-eight floors, snapping back into focus as he stared down the precipice. Was this really the right thing to do?

Yes. It was too late now, there was no other choice.

The silence swelled around him as he began the countdown in his mind.

3 – 2 – 1...

The strangest feeling engulfs you as your feet push against the edge. It is total commitment. Commitment that he hadn’t managed for anything else in his whole life.

For a couple of seconds, that’s all there is; a man floating in the air, the hotel behind him, the park over the road, the ground below. Everything stops, then:

BANG

The wind hits him hard, gravity realises what he’s done and wraps its cold fist around him, dragging him to the ground. Vision blurs as the acceleration takes hold and then it’s over, time to get off the rollercoaster.

The sun was shining intermittently and so, in spite of the wind, I decided to have a quick walk through the park then along to Hyde Park underground station. It a little further than Green Park but it gave me an excuse to pretend to myself I’d done some exercise.
Hitting the traffic and pedestrians on Park Lane as I left the park I became aware of a humming, a tune. As people turned off, entered the park, crossed the road, I became aware of its’ origin. The strange irritating tune was coming from a strange, irritating man walking a few paces ahead of me.

Of course, as soon as I heard it, I needed to know what he was humming. Not that I could ask him. He might think I was a lunatic when it was apparent that he was the person displaying the symptoms.
We soon reached traffic lights and the pair of us stood in the melee of pedestrians waiting for that elusive green man. He – unaware and gazing intently across the road, waiting for the signal. Me – pushing others out of the way to get within three people of him, two people, then right behind him to hear:

Dun dun dun der diddle der, dun dun dun der diddle der

Now, I was sure I recognised it and that really started to piss me off. I started to ask him but stopped, mid-syllable when I became aware that he wasn’t looking across the road, he was looking up in the sky, way up at the top of the Hilton Hotel that sits like a modern monolith opposite us. I can feel the blood boiling inside me, I know this tune, I’ve heard it a million times before. As it sits there, on the tip of my tongue, the verge of remembering, he starts frantically pushing through the crowd in front of him, trying to get away and take the song with him.

Instinctively I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder, and his jacket came loose, falling to the floor. It wasn’t until the sweater had come off and he was tearing at his shirt underneath that I followed his gaze upwards and saw what he had been looking at; I raised my eyes just in time to catch a figure at the top of the hotel push himself off into the open air.

And that was what it took to remember. My brain temporarily disconnected from it’s current obsession for a split second, running in neutral as I stared up open-mouthed at the jumper. I couldn’t believe it, the song he was humming was the theme from Star Wars. As I watched him clambering over the bonnets of cars I could hear him in full voice:

Der der da-da da-da daaaah!

My eyes flicked between the jumper and the semi-naked man. He’d reached the other side of the road and I could see what he was doing. An old woman was waiting for a taxi in front of the hotel. Just where the body would land. He was trying to be the hero, and that was why my mouth hung open – he was trying to sing the theme from Superman and getting it wrong.

Fucking idiot.

This imbecile bouncing through the crowds bastardising John Williams’ best work and worse still, mistaking the great composer’s finest hour for one of his lesser works. At the back of my mind I was hoping that the little prick would trip and fall, have to watch his hero-mission fail with a crunch of his nose. I mean I’ll admit that there are some similar musical motifs in Williams’ work but you have to look at the catalogue as a whole. Jaws, Indiana Jones, these are the touches of genius that elevate him above the majority of composers.

Of course you couldn’t have second-guessed what happened next. There was a crack as the superman made contact with the pensioner, knocking her off her feet and rolling with her into the road. I smirked as somewhere an invisible conductor of fate waved his baton and with the perfect timing of the Star Wars main theme the jumper was whipped out of his descent as a parachute opened above him.

I started to laugh as he drifted the final few seconds to the ground. I doubled over. The people around me looked on, not knowing what was more bizarre, the naked man assaulting an old woman, the BASE jumper bundling up his parachute and sprinting towards the relative safety of the park or me, the man unable to stands up straight due to his hysterics.

By the time I had calmed myself down the police and ambulance had arrived. The former were busy questioning the naked idiot whilst the latter attended to his handiwork. Both kept glancing over to the man propped against a tree still giggling slightly to himself that at least one musical ingrate had finally got his just dessert.

As I headed towards Hyde Park underground station I picked up his discarded t-shirt from the gutter and slipped it into my pocket. A gift from the invisible conductor in the sky.