Day 99: I Offer Some Advice To Users Of The London Underground System

I rarely get the Tube nowadays. It is brilliant if there is no-one else on it. When I am rich I will buy it and travel on it alone, going round and round endlessly and without cease, laughing all the way. Until then, I have some advice for my fellow travellers:

Do Not:

Stand in front of the barrier looking for your ticket in your handbag. I will walk into you, possibly hurt you, and not care.

Walk through the barrier, and then stop so everyone else walks into you (including me; I may hurt you, and I will not care).

Walk without looking. If you do, I will 'accidentally' hit you with my handbag which, last time I looked, contained a makeup bag, a big, old iPod, a novel, a hardback notebook, 3 pens, a large set of keys, a wallet full of 30 year old receipts, a car key, 5 lip balms, 3 half-eaten packets of Extra chewing-gum, one packet of Smints, £34 in loose change, and a mobile phone. It is therefore Heavy, and will Hurt.

Sit on your fat arse eating McDonald's when there are two very old ladies who need a seat, otherwise they will die and it will be your fault.

Get on the tube with two empty cardboard boxes that you place in front of you, therefore blocking the small amount of space between the seats. Furthermore, do not listen to some fucking hippy shit on your iPod and then sing along, tapping your Cornish Pasty shoes along to the folky rhythm. But most of all, do not do it when I am near you with a camera phone.


Listen to piss-poor dance music (probably made by you at home on your 20ft Powerbook, the capacity of which you barely understand), at top volume on your B&O headphones, the quality of which is so fine that we can hear every nuance of your bizarre sub-Midfield Generals rip-off

Eat food with your mouth open.

Have a REALLY LOUD 'amusing' conversation with Charlotte, held solely to attract attention. I know you are trying to attract attention because every time you laugh, you look around the carriage.

Change carriages while the train is moving, slamming the door loudly.

Fall asleep in a nylon tracksuit with a packet of Dulcolax in your hand when I am sitting opposite you with a camera phone.








Get in my carriage and play a guitar and sing. I will kill you.

Pick up your child and walk around with some white heather and mutter at me. I won't do it. Go away.

Get on the tube if you smell of wee and have a hole in your trousers through which your cock protrudes. These days, I choose the cocks I look at wisely and well, and yours is not one of them.

Walk onto the platform and stand still at the entrance with your other Swedish friends and your suitcases.

Ask me if I know where the Piccalilli Line is. Piccalilli is a kind of weird yellow relish, not a tube line.

Talk about me in French. I was once bilingual. I will understand you, raise my head as you start talking about my shoes, and fix you with a cold blue gaze. Then and only then might you realise that some English people speak more than one language (not many, admittedly, but you get my point), and fall in to an embarrassed silence.

Pay for a £3 tube fare in 5p coins on the big machine that takes credit cards and that everyone wants. Use one of the small ones, made for people like you.

Try and sell me your one-day Travelcard.

Use your mobile phone. Admittedly only possible on a few Tube lines, as not all of them are Underground, but - just don't. Please.

Play a tambourine.

Do a saxophone solo to 'Baker Street' and expect anyone to give you any money, ever.

Stand two abreast on the escalator.

Open your paper in my face.

Read my book/paper/letter over my shoulder.

Get on the tube in the summer if you are not clean.

Touch me. In any way. Even if I am dying.

Kiss in a way that shows the world your tongue revolving like doner kebab meat on a stick.


Do:

Use the bus, walk, cycle, get a taxi, drive, get a boat down the Thames or fly with your own arms.

Use the tube if you have an IQ of over 150.

Get an Oyster card.

Work from home.

Not work from home.

Day 99: I Decide To Make History

I was lying in bed this morning thinking, ooh me knee, ooh me ankle*, and generally thinking about random unassociated things including what kind of hats people wear in Canada in December, how to market internet dating sites, Catherine's mother doing a cat-splat into her French French windows, whether my rather beautiful 50s swing coat with dead fox round the neck has been destroyed by the Moth and what to have for breakfast, when something Sensational came on the Radio 4. (It was on at 8.20am. You'll have to scroll down the page a bit.)

Suddenly, I have a purpose. For History Matters want everyone to write a blog about what they did today, then the British Library will ARCHIVE IT FOR POSTERITY. That Sebastian Faulks was on talking about it, and giving it: yeah, like, the more rubbish the better, you know, like, maybe something INTERESTING will happen to you (no such luck, I thought), but what is Important about this is the minutiae: how you got to work, what you ate for breakfast, that sort of thing, for at some point in the distant future the idea of buying a flight on the line may be Insane as our air travel miles will be so regulated. And because People in the Future will have nothing to eat but cakes made of soya beans and blueberries, they will want to know about the Scrambled Eggs people ate for breakfast in the Olden Days. (I made that bit up but it's probably true.)

Then the other bloke said, Social History is History with the politics taken out, which I thought was good and quite funny. (Then I stopped listening for a bit and thought about doing a history MA because really it was always social history I liked the best: wars and that not that interesting; what kind of pants people wore: interesting).

Then I listened properly again and they were all being very funny, and I thought right then, I'll do that. Maybe you should too. Dunno, up to you really, but I thought I'd tell you about it in case you fancied it. And anyway, I know for a FACT that my descendants will want to know what kind of pants you wear.



* My left knee sometimes feels like it dislocates and I have to flick my leg until it pops. Yuk. My right ankle I fucked up jumping off a 15 foot wall in Bayswater in 1987; the left one I fucked up falling off an espadrille in France a few months ago. It is the left one I keep twisting again, and every time I twist it again I am reminded of someone I fell out with unexpectedly fairly recently, which makes me doubly cross and a bit sad.

SPLENDID GUEST POST: My Mother Tells Stories Of The Naked Grocer

Monkeymother writes with Astonishing Stories about a exhibitionist grocer, heard over a 15-course dinner the other night. With her kind permission, I reproduce them now for your delight.

(The only background you need to know is that they live most of the time in a very small village in very rural France, where they have been for nearly 20 years. They mainly hang out with the Frenchies, smoke Gauloises and get through approx. 1 bottle of Absinthe every three days.)

STORY ONE:

"The scene: 8.30-ish one morning in the epicerie in Louzignac. Jean-Luc's grandmother turns up to buy a packet of butter. Grocer behind counter wearing his apron, as usual. Turns round to get something from shelf behind. Mamie sees he is wearing nothing under his apron, drops her pack of butter on the floor and legs it."

STORY TWO:

"Lucette (Jean-Luc's mother) used to get mussels for the grocer every week. Four weeks running, she delivered them to his door, only to be greeted by him standing there totally nude, so she dumped the mussels on the doorstep and ran. As she hadn't stopped long enough to see where he kept his loose change, he hadn't paid her for them for four weeks so, in the end, Pierrot (J-L's father) made delivery no.5, made no reference at all to the nudity, behaving as if all was normal, and reminded him that he owed for five weeks in total, with no mention of why.

By this stage, we were weeping into our napkins."

STORY THREE:

"Missed the beginning of this one but, essentially, teen-aged Catherine (Jean-Luc's sister, MM?), had gone to grocer's house for some reason, finding him there totally nude. Lucette had seen this through the window of his verandah thing and rushed up the path to rescue her child, not realising the glass door was shut. She hurled herself against it and, apparently, did a comedy, cartoon-like, cat-splat against the glass, slowly collapsing in a heap. When someone asked Catherine how she felt about all this, she told us that she wasn't complaining - then or now - about any of it.

I suspect you had to be there, but we were all on the floor by this stage."

MM ignores my repeated requests that she Starts A Blog of her own. More amusing things happen to her (particularly as she lives with my father), than they do to me and I rather think it would be for the best.

Day 98: I Get A Cake In The Post

I returned to the Scene of Conflict (i.e., my flat) some forty minutes ago to find a package resting on my front doorstep. "What is this?", I asked myself. Only this morning I had taken delivery of a bottle of Single Malt, with a personalised label, sent all the way from the Scotland. On Saturday, I was given Gifts of such extraordinary kindness and imagination it fair took my breath away. Mr Dave Shelton, who took the likeness of me you see above, sent me a representation of myself in a raccoon hat on Saturday, accompanied by a bi-polar Polar Bear and a penguin on a motorcyle. Life couldn't possibly get any better, I thought to myself.

But no. For inside the package, all the way from Manchester, came a birthday cake created by the truly astonishing Clare. ("S" is a private name she likes to call me by. I think it's probably 'Squirrel'; I will therefore have to have Words with her at some point.) Look at it! It came with candles and napkins (she assumes I think I will be sharing it with others, which I will Not, for it is too delicious to share), wrapped in brown paper, then wrapping paper, then cellophane, and a box of Real Silver, and tissue paper, and two foil pie tins, and more foil, and other layers of Magic Protective Stuff.

Thank you, dear Clare. Your cake is delicious, and you are very kind. This blogging lark is demonstrating the Truly Astonishing Kindness of Relative Strangers, and leading to all kinds of other extraordinary adventures. All of this leads me to believe that I must stay non-working for as long as possible, breathlessly awaiting the next blog-related Magic.

(No, but really. A cake. How nice is that.)

Day 97: I Lose My Temper

I don't often lose my temper. I can't be bothered. Usually I just wander off. If I do, I am usually icy and sarcastic. It isn't very nice. And I always apologise afterwards, even if I was Sorely Tested.

But TwatBoy has pushed me to the limits of reason. A Dear Friend and I were eating grilled chicken and roast carrots and salad and drinking wine. Then we were eating oatcakes and pears on the sofa (I am obsessed with food today), watching Jane Eyre. Dear Friend kept asking questions ("Why is he blind?" "Where is she?" "What are they doing?"), not because he is Senile, for he is not yet that old, but because of the CRASHING and BANGING and SCRAPING. ("My God, is that your neighbour?")

And then the Final Straw: Jane is being 'fondled' in a way I do not remember from the Original, and Mr Rochester is whispering into her mouth and she is whispering back, but we cannot hear. ("What are they saying?" "What? What did you say?") A sudden pounding and a slam and I LEAP to my feat, and throw open my front door. There he is, grinning like a loon. There is a Pizza Boy.

"I am taking delivery of a cheeky pizza."

"The banging. It has to stop."

"Are you joking?"

"No, I am not. It has been going on all day. Crashing and banging and loud music. And it has been going on since 8 o'clock this morning. I am very, very tired, and I am very, very fucked off, and I have had ENOUGH."

With which I slam the door loudly, and immediately start feeling guilty.

Still, it is very quiet tonight. I hope he isn't crying. I shall write a Note apologising for shouting, but making the point, yet again, that his floorboards are Technically Illegal, and that anything that happens by the front door may as well be happening in my flat, right next to my head. Then, and only then, will I kill him.