Yeah, the earphones. Whites have buds, blacks have fuck-off cans, Asians seem to go either way. The earphones connected to phone connected to the eyeballs. Every last fucker. Okay, so there was one guy reading a newspaper on the train on the way down. I guess reading a newspaper shows we have our problems up here in the sticks too. What's more idiotic and dehumanising?
If you aren't into the zone out thing and you are instead watching it, it's deeply, deeply unsettling. There's something very inhuman about everyone being plugged into a machine that is feeding them an alternate reality. People can say this is progress, but I wonder. What does it actually mean to be human? But maybe the problem is not the phones, maybe the problem is the shitty tube and the way people get herded int a space invading tin can filled with sights, sounds, smells and the proximity to all three that instinctively makes us want to escape.
I think in the end, there's no valid excuse for London.
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So, more tales from the London Expedition.
On the train down, these two old birds hop on at Broxbourne (IIRC). You know the sort, old and well past it but still well up for it so the makeup is plastered into the cracks and the clownish lipstick hurts your eyes if you look directly at it. And they must have both pissed off the local hairdresser big time, because the hair! Jesus.
But fuck me darling, that wasn't main issue. One of them had a crisis and they were quite open about discussing it in a loud, I say is that Tiggy, style voice. Dear me, turns out all the glasses in her kitchen (pay attention here - NOT the dining room glasses, the KITCHEN glasses, there's a fucking difference) are beyond the pale in terms of taste. Some of them are from Tesco! So anyway, she's only gone and got a deal from some bloke in London at £134 a glass to replace the lot! Now how come I can't ever find deals like that? But they key point to remember here is that now she's got better glasses in the kitchen that her mate has, and her mate is renowned for having decent fucking kitchen glasses. And she's on her way down to London to pick up the glasses, plus do a bit of shopping with the friend because, sigh, she has nothing to wear. Actually she might have been telling the truth on that last point given the get-up she was wearing.
Each to their own, horsey women for courses. I think I'll have to become a novelist before venturing onto the train again. It's not for me. None of these people have any idea how to be a real snob and they are making a fucking bad show of pretending.
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Then there's the lift story.
I'm in this lift on the way down from floor 4. Everything is going great, 3, 2, 1... Disaster. Some other cunt has called the lift from floor 1 and now a lift moment is imminent. But it's only for 1 floor. Manageable. Doors open, wild chatter, laughter, hot potato accents and two blokes dressed to the nines with two birds who, if they weren't already pleasuring themselves by being inserted into their own anuses, I'd have bravely chatted up and probably scored with by the time G popped up on the floor display. In my mind.
I'd got dressed that day, felt it was the right thing to do seeing as I was going out and about. So I had trousers on, and a fairly decent coat from some sort of store that normal people would probably frequent. Anyway, all laughter stops dead, all conversation falters. They've realised they are in a lift with "one of them". Do you know the way you can't hold in a fart if it really wants to get out? No luck, this time there's was nothing I could do to get one out in the short amount of time I had.
Doors opened. Their ordeal was over. Gaiety restored as they skipped off to the club for lunch, where the oiks at least had the decency to wear a uniform and respond promptly to instructions. There was I thanking the heavens I wasn't them, there they were but for the grace of God. There really is nothing at all in common. Different species.
I wonder how much of my money they pissed away in 2008?
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