Adventures Underground: the Highlights

Part 2.

'I can't be fucked to get the subway yet, let's sit down and play the guitar.'

We had just spent an hour on the wrong bus, and were lost in some anonymous part of Seoul. The station passageway was deserted , and James moved over to sit by the wall. My new guitar hung lightly on my shoulders.

'Seriously?' he asked, and I nodded, even though I'd only been joking.

I laughed as I unzipped the case, and James placed two-thousand won in an upturned baseball cap.

'That's our float,' he said.

Unpractised fingers were soft on the steel of the strings. Leaning back, I reminded myself of the chords, plucked some tunes I could vaguely remember. Those who know me well will be unsurprised that I was soon playing Mr. Tambourine Man, and with no one around, my voice broke out into the air.

Shoes , followed by smart trousers, descended on the stairs. I fought my self-conciousness and kept singing loud, the businessman kept his head straight and walked on fast.

We weren't going to get that far with me singing. James took the guitar and began strumming Holiday in Spain, the words filling the space around us. A student took his headphones out and gave us the thumbs up. He was followed by a mother and child. The boy pointed while he dangled behind his mum, face lit with a smile.

When it happened, I blinked several times. The woman bowing to drop a 1000 won note.

'Kamsa Hamnida', I said, but I felt like chasing after her saying, 'I'm sorry, the hat, that was just a joke. We're not actually busking, you see, no one is supposed to give us money.'

'Awesome,' said James between lines, obviously pleased by the small, significant financial complement.

After Holiday in Spain, he handed the guitar back to me. Absent-mindedly, I began the intro to Wonderful Tonight. Another mother and child walked past. This time, the mum spoke to her son and pointed in our direction. The child began to waddle towards us, and once he was near, dropped a collection of coins in the hat.

'Cincha Kamsa Hamnida,' I said, stretching my Korean vocabulary.The boy toddled away, and my face glowed with happiness.

I strummed a couple more songs, and people smiled and gave me thumbs up signals, normally when I wasn't singing. Just when I thought it couldn't get much better, James began The Time of Your Life. While he plucked the interlude, a student couple dropped another note.

'This is awesome, I can't believe they're giving us money,' said James. 'Do you wanna get a taxi,' he laughed, 'I think we've made enough to pay for it.'

'Yeah, sod standing on the subway for an hour, let's go.' We packed up the guitar and hat and walked to the stairs. I was smiling with affection for this rushed, routine, random land.

Adventures Underground : the Highlights

Part One.

At first I thought he was just another off-centre local, trying to balance as the subway train lurched, speaking without regard for whether we understood him.

'Ne, ne,' he continued cheerily. His suit hung off his frame as though it were still on a coathanger, and his teeth jutted forward in the manner of an enthusiastic rodent.

Continuing his dialogue, he produced a business card. Most Koreans have cards, so this wasn't significant. But something was different about the white rectangle he dangled before us.

In the bottom right hand corner were two pictures of a womans' face. A few thoughts occured to me at once; perhaps he was canvassing for an escort service, or looking for a missing woman.

But a few words of English dripped through his Korean.

'New skin, new body, new skin,' he was saying. And I realised he was talking about plastic surgery, smiling all the while.

The salesmans' eyes ran over Jeni and Roxanne. He couldn't find any fault, though, and decided I was most in need of help.

'Here, here , here.' I recoiled as he prodded my moles. ' Cut, make new, clean.'

I took a few seconds to compose myself before wondering what sort of an advertisement this man was for good looks. It was like being sold diet pills by Pavarotti.

'Have you had surgery?' I asked, pointing at his blotched nose, ' Not exactly a work of art yourself, are you?'

'Ne, ne,' he smiled, underlining the phone number on his card. 'Monday, ring monday, not today, monday.'

And after I took the card he turned his teeth towards the next carraige, opened the door and scanned for new victims.