I don’t know if I’ve told you about Flute Man on these pages. He’s quite the cult figure in Stockwell and first appeared here last summer, with his flute. He definitely graces – grace might be the wrong verb – the Stockwell Crazy Hall of Fame, quite possibly the most unique character to stalk these filthy streets since the still AWOL (since 2013) Urinating Dwarf of SW8, who is of course not to be confused with the Urinating Man of SW9. Sometimes, I suspect, the street urinating of these two aforementioned dirty buggers overlapped.
Flute Man
Even the kids at the local secondary school, which when I was a kid doubled up as the Spanish Consulate School in the evenings that I had to attend three evenings a week for the best part of a decade, know the ‘Flute Man’. I’ve walked into Lidhells when the kids are coming out and heard many excitedly proclaim, ‘There’s Flute Man’.
Flute Man’s favoured spot is on the crossing by the Stockwell memorial. He has a stunning tenor voice and regularly belts out operas that are either genuine or he’s just completely off his head and is making impressive-sounding noises. And then he has the flute, which he plays manically in all weather. Now woodwind instruments aren’t my favourite. There’s something medieval about them that brings to mind guys with bob hair and tights or Acid Jazz bands of the mid-90s who always seemed to feature someone on the flute. Like the flute or loathe it though, I have to acknowledge he is a masterful player. He does none of this for money either which makes him even more curious and unique in these parts.
Sometimes, from a distance, he stares into the Pret that opened on the site of my old Natwest Bank and mocks the gentrifiers in there, pulling faces at them. Today I actually saw him emerge from Costa Coffee with the smallest of takeaway coffees (he must be a writer?) and I thought, if I worked there and he was a customer, my resignation would immediately be handed in, because this guy is in a filthy state. I wouldn’t want to be handling his loose change.
Flute Man wears the same black combat trousers and blue sweater daily, and fingerless gloves which may be black or just dirty. He’s like an action figure, always in the same outfit. He’s Spanish. His English is good, but I had noted the accent and have subsequently heard him talking Spanish many times. He appears to be in his late fifties, and his unkempt salt and pepper hair and beard feature a tonsure-sized baldness, but I suspect he could be up to twenty years younger.
Within ten metres of exiting the Costa, Flute Man was belting out another tune and then was singing ‘Happy Easter’ to the passing drivers and pedestrians.
A couple of weeks ago, in torrential rain, he was again playing the flute in crazy fashion, showing an impressive litheness, close to the ground, bending all the way back as he got into whatever it was he was playing.
You’ll often see Flute Man tidying up the rubbish on Clapham Road. To some it might look like he’s bin raiding, not an unusual spectacle in these parts. Indeed, earlier today I saw White Denim, a desperate Portuguese loner in white jeans who walks from Stockwell Road to Herne Hill every day checking all the bins. Last summer, I almost collapsed when I witnessed White Denim pick up a napkin from a street bin to clean his hands and face. That will haunt me forever.
Flute Man certainly has his work cut out collating all the rubbish in SW8. Somehow, from somewhere, or maybe these came with him, he has a collection of large flags he often ties around his neck like some successful athlete doing a lap of honour, the Israeli, Italian and Mexican flags, all in a dirty state. There was one occasion when he was collecting rubbish in blustery conditions with the Israeli flag tied around his neck. The wind kept blowing the flag into his face and he was getting increasingly irascible, swatting the flag away.
You’ll often find him outside Stockwell Station shooting the breeze with the kebab van out there that took over from Brenda’s fruit stall in 2015 (despite my hugely unsuccessful Resonance FM campaign to keep Brenda’s then-prominently located stall in place). I’m sure the Kebab Van’s social media features a few videos of Flute Man as I have noted one of the Kebab guys filming him when the woodwind maestro is on top form and putting the world to rights.
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