The story goes like this. There was a young
woman working for the film company in Soho, the year they made ‘The Snowman.’
She had a pretty lowly job in the office, but she could knit. It was she who
had created the scarf prop for the filmed scene in the attic. She had knitted
it so it looked exactly like the one in the cartoon, so that Bowie could pick
it up and remember his magical adventure.
When Bowie was visiting the offices of the
company to toast the success of the film, there was a great buzz in the
building. Everyone wanted to see him, but he was whisked straight up to the top
floor to meet the men in suits. The people in the humbler offices below barely
got a glimpse of him. After his meeting he was hustled right out again to his
waiting limo and everyone was disappointed. The young woman and her colleagues
were hanging out of their window, watching his car zigzag away through the Soho
streets.
She felt a particular attachment to that
film because of the scarf she had knitted for it. She’d worked hard to get it
right. It was an important prop because it was
the link between the everyday world and the world of magic.
On the day of Bowie’s fleeting visit, this
young woman had come into work with one of her boyfriend’s favourite albums,
‘Hunky Dory’, on vinyl, in a brown paper bag. She’d carried it very carefully
on the tube that morning, and she had set it on her desk while she got on with
the day’s work, excitedly waiting for the moment when the Thin White Duke would
pass through the office and she could jump up and get it signed.
But he never came by.
It was just a flying visit.
At the end of the day she went home
disconsolately and told her boyfriend that she’d had no luck. He didn’t mind,
but he wanted to know what she’d done with his favourite record. He’d had it
since he was a kid.
‘Oh, I must have left it on my desk,’ she
said. She had been so cheesed off about the whole business that she had put it
out of her head. ‘I’ll bring it home tomorrow, promise.’
The next day she had wiped the whole saga
from her mind. She went into work, the same as any other day. Into Central
London, into Soho, into the office. She sat herself down at her desk.
And there it was, right in front of her.
Her boyfriend’s beloved copy of Hunky Dory. But there were black scribbles all
over the cover picture; all over Bowie’s soft focus beauty in black marker pen.
It was signed with love, and dedicated to the girl who had knitted his scarf
for him.
She sat staring at it for a while – at the lightning
bolt of his signature – trying to figure out how he could have known. Also, how
had he done it? She had seen him leave the building. She had hardly left her
desk all day. He had no idea who she was…
She never found out the answer. Years later
she was still telling the story and still trying to figure it out.
When Bowie died she told the story to one
of the newspapers and that’s how I heard it. It was my favourite story of all
the ones flying about that week. It was a story about that snowman magic
creeping wonderfully, mysteriously, into real life, making a Christmassy story
in the bleakest part of the year.
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