Big Pig

Spring and autumn both bring with them the feeling of change, but for me autumn has the edge: it has that electricity in the air, that feeling of anticipation; it always feels exciting.
I like walking the back streets of London on windy nights in autumn; I always get the feeling that something is going to happen. The streets and houses are bathed in orange from the street lights, and newly arrived winds shift the just fallen leaves around in whooshes, waves and mini-whirlwinds, making those deserted back streets sound alive.
And this time, they really were: a great big hairy pig was stood right in the middle of the road. A big hairy pig with tusks, for Christ's sake.
So that hadn't been the sound of leaves getting blown around. Not this time. It had been hairy hooves, no ' what do you call them? ' trotters. Fucking trotters and snuffling, that's what I'd heard, coming from the type of beast whose natural habitat was, surely, the forests of Bavaria, or some such place. Not East London.
This pig was the size of a car. It was standing two cars lengths away, and I had the feeling it was quite calmly weighing up what to do next. I was frozen to the spot, not from fear ' I was too freaked out to be scared: I was definitely awe-struck, by an awfully big pig.
I stared at the pig, and the pig stared back. Then it hoofed the floor, made a snuffling sound, turned and pelted down the side road making a clacking sound on the tarmac with its galloping trotters.
It took about a second ' a long time in these situations ' and then I came to life and ran after it, but it was gone. As if a beast like that wasn't weird enough round here, it went and topped it all by vanishing, in the middle of East London. Residential district.
Of course I looked some more, and guess what. No pig.
Well I'll be fucked. I swear to god, I saw it. A giant fucking hairy pig with big fuck-off tusks and trotters.
I've seen some shit, although admittedly some of it hasn't been real. I mean, some of the stuff I've seen, you wouldn't have, but although this pig was gone, there were trotter marks in the mud. Maybe they were dog tracks? No. Trotters. In East London.