Hymn

Puff

We’ve been suffering quite a lot of wind recently.  It’s quite disturbing.  I couldn’t sleep last night, such was its ferociousness.  Made the windows rattle.  Still, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Now I’m the last person to suggest that there’s something slightly wussy about pampered Southerners who’ve never worked down a coal mine, on a trawler or indeed done anything more stressful than choosing between a skinny latte or mochachino but tonight I did wonder if perhaps too many of them were wrapped in cotton wool. 

It was still a bit gusty, I grant you.  But they stopped the trains.  You know, trains - big, hundred tonne, armoured metal boxes that run on rails.  Stopped the trains because it was windy.  I ask you.  Windy.  It was a bit blowy not a bloody nuclear firefight.  Poor little trains.  Not wanting to risk going too far North.  Into the dangerous wild.  With its scary-wary wind.  Better to stay close to home.  So, they crept just 50 miles out of the Capital before scurrying back to their fluffy warm beds.

That meant an equally long rescue from T.  In our little car.  It was a bit like dragging a matchbox on a piece of string through a waterfall.  At midnight.  In pyjamas.  Now, that was a cheery journey home, I can tell you.

Posh Nosh

I don’t do ‘posh’ very well.  Can’t relax into it or wallow in its luxury.  I always feel out of place.  Look so too.  Tonight I found myself in lavish surroundings feeling like a firework tossed into a bonfire.

It was a seven course meal.  Seven.  And that didn’t include coffee.  Seven.  I ask you.  Have they only got small pans?  Seven.  If they gave you bigger portions they wouldn’t need so many rounds would they?  And there’d be less washing up.  But would anyone listen to me?  After the first couple of suggestions, the waiters pursed their lips to look like cat’s bottoms.

Otherwise, I tried to blend in.  I negotiated the cutlery without incident.  They didn’t even catch me out at plate number three, the creamy frog-spawny thing, which only required a fork.  I used the right glasses for the correct liquids and I didn’t tuck my napkin into my shirt.

However, I find myself overcompensating in such uncomfortably comfortable circumstances; trying to make up for an unsophisticated upbringing, trying to fit it.  I gently joked about the quality of the food as though superlative suppers were an everyday occurrence for me.  Actually, I should have just laughed like a horse and said “Super” periodically or, better still, nothing at all.  My company was generously accommodating but it wasn’t universal.

Now I’m the first to acknowledge that I’m an uncultured oik who wouldn’t know Foie Gras from a cucumber sandwich but the most irksome part of the evening was the way the waiters looked down their noses on us.  The waiters!  The nerve.   It was as though I wasn’t paying for the meal.  Actually, it wasn’t me paying for the meal but that’s hardly the point is it?  Someone was paying for my meal and therefore keeping a roof over these penguins’ heads.  After the third second course, they did little to disguise their condescending sneer.  Bloody waiters.  But you know what?  I’m not sure there was that much to crow about.  It wasn’t that posh. Although the menu boasted truffle, the only time I tasted it was in the chocolates at coffee.  And, they didn’t even offer us After Eight mints.  Sophisticated?!  They don’t know the meaning of the world.  I stole a small box of chocolates to prove the point.

You Can't Pin that on Me

What idiot thought piercing a perfectly good tie with a bejewelled needle was a good, marketable, idea?  Yet there we are, four pointless tie-pins in this year’s stocking.  Why would I want to put a hole in any of my neckties?  Or my shirts for that matter?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful for the token, just mad at the implication that I should ruin my fairly sparse formal wardrobe for it.  Seriously, someone having a laugh aren’t they?  ‘Here you are, son.  Stick this pin through your tie, then your shirt, then cover the pointy end with this instantly losable cap and wait for blood to start seeping through.  Be a man.’  Be a twat more like.  Seriously.  Ties?  Pins?  Look, here’s a watch with razors for a strap and here’s a necklace made of barbed wire.

Incense

God, I hate joss-sticks.  Dirty smelly things.  I cannot understand why anyone this side of Hell would willingly light one.  I swear the slightest exposure burns the nasal passages of anyone not equipped with green scales, a long tail and wings.  At least napalm has the decency to market itself as a weapon.  And the damn smell, no it’s not perfume, lingers so oppressively, it feels like you’ve been dipped in it.  And you can’t stub them out.  Oh no.  No siree.  No subtle snuffing while the host’s back is turned.  The ember disappears then, whoof, alight again, like one of those bloody joke candles.  They’re made of some inextinguishable material that once lit burns in perpetuity.  It might be fissile.  And somehow, in direct contradiction to most of the laws of physics, the wispy smoke trail immediately impregnates every room in the house.  It drives me mad.  Still, at least the name makes sense.

In Out Shake It All About

There was once a time, not so long ago, when I couldn’t get the damn things in.  Now I’m so used to them and so weary from a renewed outbreak of Sleepless Child that this morning when I went to put my contact lenses in, I realised I hadn’t taken them out. Overnight those wretched pieces of plastic had glued themselves to my already bloodshot eyes.  Still it did explain my virtual blindness when I woke.  I spent the morning fumbling around the house bearing a strong resemblance to Heidi’s blind grandmother.

Waiting Rum

I travel so many miles on the railways I might as well be an engine driver.  Most of the time it’s pretty good; this week it’s been horrendous.  At least once each day in the last three days, I’ve found myself stranded at stations having missed connections because of faulty trains.  Never mine.  Always the one in front. Never the one behind, damn it.  If it was mine, I could dismiss it as Just Typical and feel ever-so-slightly guilty for jinxing my fellow passengers.  But with my carriage faultless, this is a particularly sadistic form of inconvenience - the poor souls on the broken loco don’t even know that the person to blame is sitting a few miles behind them.  And so it is that I miss the Once in a Blue Moon connection.

Now I’m not sure which rules apply to British railway stations but I’m pretty sure that they defy most the of the laws of physics.  Light cannot penetrate them and time slows to an imperceptible crawl.  They induce a heaviness that is only equalled by the gravitational pull of a collapsing star and they are among the most depressing places known to man, second only to my Great Aunt Mary’s Front Room.  The waiting rooms are the final refuge of the desperate, the destitute and the deranged.  Usually there’s one of each.  Including me.

In traditional English social gatherings, it is customary to keep as much distance as possible between you and the fellow guests.  While the man talking to his coffee cup and rocking gently seemed to understand these conventions, the drunkard smelling of urine didn’t.  He was very keen to strike up a conversation.  I’m not entirely sure but he seemed to want to chat about ya-bloot-sen-a-ticket-fer-noboo-n-neebee.  We chatter amiably enough, albeit one-sidedly and punctuated with growling, for a little over half an hour before he fell asleep on my shoulder.  Thankfully, it was only a further twenty minutes before I had an excuse to move and leave him dribbling contently on the ripped seat.

I eventually fell through my front door only a little later than if I had walked the hundred or so miles.

Training

I really don’t know why I bother.  I made a real effort to leave in good time for my train home tonight.  Usually, it’s a breakneck charge through the rush hour throngs having left work slightly later than I need to to make all the necessary connections.   Normally I collapse panting on the carriage floor having thrown myself over the unimpressed guard and through the closing doors.  This evening I’d given myself an extra fifteen minutes on the Underground but we stalled just outside Euston.  The train in front had broken, half-in, half-out of the platform.  We waited.  The temperature climbed to levels that would have made Satan himself hop from hoof to hoof shrieking, “Hot, hot, hot!”  Except, of course, this was the London Tube during Commuter Time and any form of movement was out of the question: it’s dangerous enough to exhale because of the risk of someone squeezing into your depleted lung space.  It was too hot and we were too close.  Let’s be honest, there’s a period during physical contact when a bit of sweat can be quite a pleasant addition.  This wasn’t one of those times.  If there was a moment when we were a bit slippery, it passed as quickly as an attempt to hold a toad with wet hands.  We were quickly mired in a thoroughly disagreeable stew where our communal perspiration took the consistency of treacle and glued us together like toffee-coated sardines in suits. 

After thirty minutes, just at the point when claustrophobia and BO threatened to burst into hysterical panic, we pulled, unannounced into the station.  I missed my train by two minutes so had the station concourse to enjoy for another fifty-eight.  Still, it did give me the best part of an hour to scrape off the residue of my fellow passengers.

Trollied

I object to being tutted at when I’ve tripped over someone else’s obstruction.  There’s an increasing number of these infernal contraptions around.  They used to be the preserve of holidays and airports; now they’re everywhere and every Tom, Dick and Harry has one, although mainly it’s Dicks.  Suitcases I can understand: they are big bulky things always far too heavy to lift when full - you might as well fill a Volvo with your luggage and put a handle on it.  But now, bags little bigger than purses have wheels.  Presumably, it’s quite common to carry a lead ingot or two down to the local shops these days.  It’s not the weight-related needlessness of these briefcases that causes the problem though.  It’s the driving.  Most people can’t steer a trolley around a supermarket without demolishing the odd pyramid of special-offer kidney beans so trailing a small vehicle behind them is almost criminally negligent.  But it's the carelessness of out of sight, out of mind - if it's behind me, it doesn't matter - like the absence of rear-view mirror in Italian cars.  And you can’t get round them as they amble along.  Oh no.  Not only does the drag of their super dense sandwiches slow these human tractors to a crawl, the combined width of them and their case blocks most walkways.  Still, they stroll along blissfully oblivious to the growing crush of people behind.  It’s only the occasional tremor of another poor soul having their feet whipped from under them that reminds the owner that their little chariot is there at all.

Clowning Around

Let’s be honest - I’m a little vain.  God only knows why - it’s not like I don’t own a mirror.  The photo ID I’ve suffered for the last five years looks as though I’ve spent a long stretch on Death Row.  They looked like hard years, those years in Sing Sing.  I’ll never look at a piece of soap in the same way again.  Still, I’ve put all of that behind me.  I wanted to move on.  I wanted a new look - couldn’t possibly be any worse, I thought, not with these professionals.  But, good God, they’ve had a go.  I’ve gone green.  Not wholly green you understand.  Not as if the overall colour has shifted, wrong light or something.  Oh no.  My temples are green.  My forehead is orange.  Fucking orange.  How does that happen?  I’ve purple cheeks and my lips look yellow.  There’s not a single natural colour or flesh tone in sight.  I look as though someone’s tried to drown me in the dye they use for bloody Skittles.  And They, the ones that take these pictures, looked at me as though I was being unreasonable when I complained that I look like a bastard clown.  “Got a problem with clowns?” they seemed to say with their no committal shrug, like I’m some dangerously twisted clown-hating fascist.  “Anyway, it’s on the system now” they said absolving themselves of responsibility.  As if to add insult to injury, while others have demure head and shoulder shots, my face fills the whole friggin’ card.  At least they have the dignity of distance.  Not me.  No, siree.  I’m the lunatic clown with my face pressed against the lens.  Great.  Just great.

Hooray

He left a newspaper in the crowded carriage as a marker while he bought a drink.  With ice.  At teatime.  He blustered back in a fashion that only Money can afford.  Loud and brash with the finest plum in his mouth and talking at a volume that ensured the whole carriage was engaged in his conversation, he launched into probing, insensitive, interrogation of his unfortunate seat-mate.  “What do you do?”  “Are you a lawyer?”  “So you’re a solicitor?”  “In the City?”  “For local government?”  “Are you married?”  “Living with someone?”  Just as it was becoming excruciating, another bloody Hooray-Henry piped up from across the aisle.  “Work in the City?”  “Yes, married twice.  First time to an Aussie.  Family into cattle.  God, it was awful.”  It was like two fucking seals barking at each other.  The conversation charged from money to marriage to football (rugby of course).  It wasn’t so much a dialogue as the proclamation of opinions.  The second’s Spanish Guitar ring tone interrupted the proceedings.  Spanish Guitar.  Ringtone.  I suspect he was being delightfully continental.  Or a twat.  Unfortunately, this exposed the poor girl caught between them to another piece of inspection under the Class microscope.  “Where do you live?”  “What does your boyfriend do?”  It all felt jolly fun.  I’m sure they’ll laugh about it when they return to First Class.  In a show of muted solidarity, we proles shared a silent cheer when he got orf.