newest older email

2003-09-25 - 10:44 a.m.

Obviously it�s a stone cold delight to be back in London after three weeks hoofing it around the shop, ie. the world, and back in the office.

Nothing highlights the joy of travel much more than being back behind a desk, arguing over whose turn it is to make the coffee and rediscovering the joy of tedious, prosaic, spiritually bereft work. Good to be back. Cheers.

The overriding pleasure naturally comes with getting to grips with commuting again, and I don�t want to be the ten gazillionth Londoner to complain about the tube, but there�s a certain sub-section of fellow traveller that at the moment is especially getting right on my tit end. What is with (adopts tone of lame stand up comic) the people who MUST AT ALL COSTS read the newspaper on a crowded tube carriage? The rest of us are feeling bad enough cramming onto the train and invading other people�s personal space as it is, and as such, leave our hands down where they can�t do anything approaching invasive surgery. Some people acknowledge the crowding and put down their reading material for a few minutes until it clears out. And then there are the people who have jolly well bought a morning newspaper and bugger me sideways with a bendy bargepole if they aren�t going to exercise their god given right to READ that paper come hell, high water, or space to manoeuvre that verges on the molecular. See as they strain their arms upwards to bring the newsprint to within a centimetre of their newshungry faces, folding the pages to read about a sentence at a time, but it doesn�t matter because THEY MUST READ THE NEWS. Some of them get flattened against the glass partitions as the carriage fills to bursting point, but the struggle for news consumption does not end, and they will prise their paper carrying limbs up from the melee, their features flattened against the transparent barrier for all to see as they crane their necks back and slide a wafer thin page between them and the glass, and despite all manner of physical discomfort, ingest the latest celebrity gossip micrometres from the printed page, eyes widening like a current events junky getting a covert fix in writhing scrum. Here�s the fucking news Chester: Your selfish page turning is not only ridiculously inconsiderate, but in your frenzy to look at your fucking horoscopes, your elbows are playing my ribs like a rhino on a xylophone, so why not just put the rag down for ten minutes and let us all have a chance of breathing to at least ten per cent of capacity, and when you get off and sit down at your grubby little desk, you can read to your heart�s content about which soap nymphette was caught blowing which has been footballer, and which reality TV show turdburger has signed some six figure book deal. And we�ll all be happier. Really. I promise.

Back
hosted by DiaryLand.com