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2002-08-19 - 5:20 p.m.

Just returned from the hinterlands of my home town. The rail service up there is shot to pieces, so I was expecting a tortuous journey up, but the logistics (train � coach � train) were actually OK. The torture came in the form of the mother and her young girl sat next to me. Despite it very clearly being the school holidays at the moment, the mother was employing some coercive educational tactics by forcing her daughter to recite her times tables � not in itself annoying except the daughter could seemingly only deliver the answers at a volume and pitch associated with industrial security devices that have to be heard above heavy machinery � like an evacuation alarm in an iron foundry. So we went through tables one to twelve, at times the mother contesting the answers, saying things like �Eight eights? Sixty four? Isn�t it sixty six?� indicating that she was in no position to be calling the mathematical shots with such self assurance. Eventually we reached the multiplication Mecca of 144, but the feat failed to satiate the numerical lust of the mother, and she then made the squawking upstart do the whole thing again�but�backwards. The child became instantly more vocal, which was a pity since the whole process took roughly seventeen times as long � the mistakes, the restarts, the thinking out (very) loud � history has rarely seen a more frustrating public display of numeracy. The maths over, the girl�s reward was to play any game she wanted, which became one of her own devising, whereby she made her mother guess which pop star she was thinking of, no clues provided. Her mother�s knowledge of pop star names was pretty remedial, but pride was at stake, though she wasn�t demonstrating the most professional of inquisition techniques: Mum : �Is the choice only from people that are alive?� Girl: �No.� Mum: �Err�George Michael?� By the time I got to my stop I was almost hoping for a recap on the maths.

It was a fairly uneventful stay, punctuated only be an ill-advised trip to a local nightclub with some friends. It was great, if you happen to be partial to drinking bottled vodka and cough mixture cocktails, dancing to the Grease megamix and being hit on by toothless forty-five year old bints commenting that your shaved head �looks like a big tit�. Needless to say, I hit the cough mixture pretty hard.

The journey home provided much chaos as the seat reservations had been screwed up, and people were refusing to budge, even in the face of irrefutable physical proof like my ticket with my seat reservation on, so I sneaked into first class and hoped no-one would notice (they didn�t). I turned off my phone so that I could have a snooze, only to turn it back on some time later to find three separate messages from my mum, with reference to the respective needs that she sees my life having at the moment. There�s the staple warning about how to take the diarrhoea tablets she routinely forces on me, imagining as she must, that I live a nightmare existence of soiled underwear and toilet trips, despite the lack of evidence to suggest this. Next, from nowhere, an offer for me to �talk about the breakup� � at first I think she has me confused with someone like Billy Bob Thornton, but then realise she is talking about the only girlfriend I�ve ever had, a split that came almost three years ago. I can only assume she thinks that I�m suffering from delayed trauma � perhaps, in her mind, the mystifying cause of why I never eat breakfast � though part of me suspects that she�s just realised that she may have missed out on some of the juicier details, not that there were any. Finally, she reminds me �not to forget to have a social life� and that I should �try and meet someone nice� as I�d �make a wonderful dad�. Why she would think this is as baffling as her preconceptions about my bowels since I fervently insult any infant she cares to bring into conversation, though it�s a relief to know that I have her permission to knock someone up. It�s just funny to think that she imagines me to be slavishly denying myself a relationship by devoting myself to 18 hour days at the office, whereas the reality, as well you know, is an alcohol-fuelled frenzied search for anyone that would touch me with a bargepole.

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