Another Magical Bowie Story




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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