Andrássy út, Budapest, May 2015. Or was it Rákóczi út? I can’t remember. One of the city’s main thoroughfares anyway. Some crazy guy from Manchester who wore an outsize papier-mâché head and sang in a funny voice. Or his celluloid simulacrum? Maybe this wasn’t Frank at all.
Maybe this wasn’t Budapest either but an accumulation of my own imaginings of what central Europe is or should be: Trabants puking black smoke into the air, light railway rolling stock from the communist era, shelf toilets, graffiti and loads of it. And Frank. Or not-Frank. In Budapest or my dream of it, now folded neatly in time newly past, still warm. Warm and bright. Frank and not-Frank. A sticker on the wall of a bookshop doorway, somewhere in time.
