Offender Caught

I want to say, "I caught him," but you can't really "catch" someone doing something if they're not trying to hide it.

I was standing on the platform at Marble Arch. An eastbound Central Line train was just pulling up. This was a few weeks ago so I don't remember exactly what I was thinking, but I was probably admiring the cracked and peeling paint around the Marble Arch roundrel. There is something oddly beautiful about this particular view of urban decay. Every time I stand at this spot I look at the wall in front of me on the other side of the tracks like I look at art. Sometimes when the train is pulling in I stare more intently at the wall so I can catch the moment the train and my spot on the wall collide. It's a little game that I play.

On this particular morning a few weeks ago, when the train pulled to a stop I looked through the window of the still closed door and caught a well dressed man digging deep into his nose.

Disgusting.

I can't be 100% certain, but I thought he saw me seeing him. My view of the man was momentarily obstructed while the carriage doors slid open. If we humans are really capable of formulating complete thoughts in just a fraction of a second then my thoughts during the brief span of time when the Nosepicker was out of sight were something like: he'll be done by the time he's back in view. Try not to touch the hand rails near him.

Turns out he wasn't done. If there had been any doubt about the possible initial eye contact, there was none about the subsequent. When you're on the Tube and it comes to a stop, you tend to watch the disembarking passengers followed by the newcomers getting on. At least I do, and I'm probably pretty typical.

Nosepicker was typical in this regard too. It was whilst he was watching the embarking passengers (and still digging deep!) when he and I made eye contact. Rather than quickly turning away as I might when making eye contact with a stranger, I held my gaze.

That's right: I see you. I've caught you.

I expected him to turn away. I expected him to be a little bit embarrassed. He just continued to twist his index finger in his nostril while holding my eyes to his. His stare was placid and content like my dog when I scratch her belly.

Have you no shame?

I mentally gawked at Nosepicker's unabashed breaking of commonplace etiquette.

Call me provincial.

Mulling over this otherwise well-presented man, and his lack of shame, I wondered what was the difference between him and me. Was he poorly brought up? I tried to imagine what it would take to make me so obviously pick my nose in public. I imagined all sorts of uncomfortable boogers ... the kind that feel so obvious, you think everyone must notice. no matter the booger, I wouldn't pick it in public.

Why? Why will he pick his nose and I won't pick mine? Why am I so aware of the shame? Why would I rather keep my booger secret?

In a dramatic stretch of thought, I thought . . .

maybe because I was sexually abused as a child . . .

I'm practised at keeping secrets.

Commuters Commune

I have had to join a stampede in order to board the morning train bound for Clapham Junction. Once aboard we collectively settle into place. I watch a man down the other length of the carriage. The crowd blocks my complete view. All I can see is his head. He could be holding a book or newspaper for all I know, but I know he's not. Something about his face, and I know he's lost in thought.

Other than the low steady exhalation of the carriage aircon, the whirring undercurrent of the train rushing down its tracks, and the occasional rustling of a newspaper page being turned, the carriage is silent.

All these people and not a peep.

I'm astounded. I shouldn't be. I'm well acquainted with the local commuting conventions. But, here and now I am struck by the feat of silence accomplished by the 40, 50, 60 people who are joined by a common direction.

I note the fact that I am having an internal conversation: taking in and mulling over my immediate environment.

It's not so quiet in your head.

I begin to imagine the autodialogues - those silent conversations with self - that each and every one of my commuting companions must be having. Those like me with no immediate external source of distraction are fully at the mercy of their own thoughts. Those -- like the fragile bird-looking girl with long blond tresses still damp from her morning shower or the older man sitting to the left of bird-girl, he has thinning, gray hair and broken blood vessels on his nose, and the wire from his headphones is threaded underneath and out through the neck and up to his ear -- are plugged into all manner of audio devices (generally iPod). Others read books or The Metro or other newspapers or periodicals. Music and written words don't negate my companions' inner dialogues, rather, I imagine, they provide a channel by which thoughts are focused onto something other -- a song, a memory, a tibit of gossip.

I imagine how terribly noisy it would be if all our inner autodialogues were aired out loud. A nightmare din. Still it would be curious to here these conversations.

Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't shut up.

Door Slams

I think if anyone is watching from a window across the street they will have seen me leave the house shortly after seven with a blouse on a hanger and a dry cleaning ticket. Last week when I picked up my dry cleaning I hadn't noticed that the cleaners had swapped one of my skirts with someone else's blouse. This morning when I discovered the drab olive green, polyester-to-the-touch Boss blouse amidst my items I wondered if it could be The Man's. It was more of a shirt than a blouse despite what the dry cleaning ticket said. But no, it would be far too small for my man and it was a bit feminine a cut. As I walked the block and a half to the dry cleaners confident that they open at seven, I thought about how I didn't realise Boss made clothes for women. I was disappointed with Toggs Cleaning and with my memory when I saw the opening hours embossed in the opaque glass door: 7:30.

God damn it.

I told myself I would just have to remember to go after work.

Fat chance.

This is when I think about the perhaps-watcher across the street watching me go back home fruitlessly.

I dawdle. I feed the dog. I want to send a couple work emails before I go and the act of going online suckers me into responding to last post's comments. Exchange is cranky and my outgoing work mails are slow to go. I check the contents of my work bag.

Do you have everything ?

I do.

I pee even though I don't really have to. Before I know it, it is half seven. I rejoice at my ability to pass time and grab the drab olive blouse which is not mine. On the way out I swing the door shut; it thuds hard onto my index finger and swings back open.

GOD DAMN IT MOTHER FUCKER!!!!@&&?&,$$@##!??!!!!!!!

I wonder if the perhaps-watcher is watching me now as I grumble my way back to Toggs.

Battle Lost

I lost the battle with the scourge afflicting the Laurel trees in the front of our flat.

The Laurel seemed to get better after the removal (and quarantine to a plastic bin) of as many infected leaves as possible followed by repeated, disciplined applications of anti-fungal, anti-mildew, anti-little-plant-harming-creatures spray.

Someone, somewhere on the Internet had advised that I ensure that any leaves that had fallen from the Laurel trees, also be collected and quarantined as the fungus / mildew / infection could spread even from the fallen comrades already decaying in the earth beneath the solid branches of the suffering Laurel.

It was My Man who gently coaxed me to the realisation that I needed help to win the war..

“I think it’s time we call a tree doctor.”

The tree doctor came, saw, and told us what needed to be done to conquer.

His diagnosis: the Laurel must be disburdened of its greenery. Every last bit. Only then will it stand a fighting chance.

3 Men

I’m looking for a word. I’m sure it must exist, but I don’t know it … me with my fancy degree from a pricey university, and I can’t think of a simple word.

I’m looking for a word that captures my waking train of thought when it veers down its own path and ends up somewhere dreadful. A daydream is a positive, fanciful thing. It insinuates free time and imagination and sitting on the porch step, thinking the day away while you wait for the mail man to come and visit and hopefully bring you something handwritten from someone surprising.

‘Daydream’ isn’t the word I’m looking for. Nor is ‘fantasy’ which isn’t so different from ‘daydream’ – maybe just a bit racier, more mature, or maybe with a sci-fi edge. The word I’m looking for has nothing to do with science fiction.

I suppose it comes closest to ‘nightmare’ although to my mind a nightmare has to happen at night, and my experience with this unnamed experience generally happens during the day when I am fully conscious, or at least not asleep.

Is ‘daymare’ a word?

Spellcheck* doesn’t think so.

There has to be a word. Surely I’m not the only one whose train of thought bubbles along quite happily and then BAM gets sidetracked by the disturbing, sometimes morbid.

I’m in the train, fully awake but closing my eyes and thinking about sleep as a time-passing option during my commute. My thumb twirls my wedding band around my ring finger. My eyes jar open to shake out the thought of a fellow train passenger lopping off my left hand so that he or she can carry away my wedding band, finger, hand, and all. I think of the blood that would drip. I wonder if I have tissues in my bag. I think I would have to use my scarf as a bandage to stop the bleeding.

I’m walking home from the tube station. The pavement** is full of slow walking commuters. I haven’t got a thought in my head (that I remember). I instinctively step onto the street to walk around the pavement-blocking, slow-walkers. Suddenly I have the vision of a car speeding along and clipping me.

God damn it!

I once knew a guy who was clipped by a car. He was fine after a bout of surgeries, though he never walked quite the same again. I think I must be thinking of this guy – Jerry was his name – when I have my ‘daymare’. The seriousness of my accident outweighs Jerry’s. I’m knocked onto the pavement. I have mortal injuries. I’m just two blocks from home, and I wonder if MyMan is at home. Will he feel a strange twinge when I’m clipped? Will I die before getting to tell him – one more time – how much I love him – and he’s only a block, or 2, away!

I’ll think about groping through my bag for my phone while I slowly bleed to death. I’ll curse myself for the cluttered mess in my bag. I’m not sure I’ll be able to reach the phone, and if I do, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to dial the number. I wonder if the slow-walkers will help me, but then I imagine someone actually pilfering my stuff while I am helpless to stop them. I imagine my disappointment at dying on the kerb two blocks from home, from The Dog and from My Man.

It’s not a daydream. It’s not a fantasy. What the hell is it?

*Spellcheck doesn't think much of itself either.
**For North Americans, pavement = sidewalk

Kitchen Satisfies

My kitchen is small.

The dishwasher is half the size of a full grown dishwasher (members of the North American audience will likely not have appreciated that they – the Dishwasher-making people - made ½ sized dishwashers), and our refrigerator is a midget.

That’s probably not PC.

The pint sized dishwasher goes some way to explaining My Man’s aversion to using the pasta plates. It’s an odd sized dishwasher; they are odd sized plates; together, a pain to make a match.

Standing in the middle of my kitchen, I can do all the important kitchen activities without moving more than a step. Emptying the pint sized dishwasher entails a side bend to the left to grab hold of a dish and a stretch to the right to put away the plate, the bowl, the glass or whatever it is that needs putting away. From the same spot, I can rinse fruits and vegetables in the kitchen basin – it’s about the size of 2 and ½ shoe boxes. From the very same spot where I’ve executed the rest of the kitchen chores, I can stir the porridge as it simmers on the stove top. In reality it’s a 1 person kitchen, unless the two – or possibly three! – are good natured and not shy of intimacy.

A couple of Canadian schoolgirls screeched with delight when they saw our kitchen.

“Look Mummy! It’s like a fairy princess kitchen.”

Since then I sometimes think about putting on my wedding dress to hang out in the kitchen. The Man wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t get it. It might freak him out. He’d think I’d lost it.

Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

I’m thinking about our kitchen, and about how my man served us some wine last night, and in doing so, how he exposed a flaw in my previous post.

He doesn’t like to use the deck chairs. He doesn’t like to use the pasta plates.

So, he’s the utilitarian minded one.

However, it’s me who doesn’t like to use the wine glasses. Odds are I’ll break one. I’m always breaking our official wine glasses, and often times breaking the tumblers I’ve adopted for wine. The tumblers generally come from Nutella. I don’t eat Nutella anymore, so I must be very careful with the two remaining previous-Nutella-containers-now-wine-tumblers that we have left. I love drinking wine out of these glass mugs. My Man hates it. He says the wine tastes better from a “real glass”. I say life tastes better when you’re not afraid of impending broken glass shards (and exasperated looks from loved ones).

What the hell’s the point?

I think I’m thinking about My Man, and I’m thinking about my kitchen because I’m reading Banana’s Kitchen, and she’s turned my mind that way.

I’ve misled by a tense.

I’m not reading.

I’ve read.

I just finished it this morning.

I wasn’t sure if there were two stories in the book I have. On the cover there is only 1 title, but in the introduction there is a reference to the 2nd story, a novella. I had suspended my expectations. When I got to what was possibly the end, I wondered if, when I turned the page, I would still be with the characters in the Kitchen.

I wasn’t. It was a new girl, a new love, a new drama, and It was OK. I wasn’t quite emotionally ready to end the book., but I was fine with the end of the main story. I was glad for the transition. It spared me the cutting disappointment that often accompanies when a book is no more.

Kitchen is little, but satisfying.

Chair Decked

It’s a weekend with nothing much on. I’m glad for that. The weather just happens to be superb; true Brits are probably complaining about the humidity and/or looking all red in the face and about to die.

We have a couple of deck chairs – the kind that have wooden frames and canvas to hold the sitter in place – and when not in use, these deck chairs fold up flat. The same kind of deck chairs you can rent in London parks. The canvas part of the London park deck chairs, though, is green and white striped; our deck chairs have purple, orange, and red stripes of varying thicknesses and shades. Last time I rented one of the London park deck chairs was in 2002 in Green Park. It was £1 for an hour. I wonder how much it is now.

I love sitting in our deck chairs. Sometimes if the weather turns, I move the chair inside and end up watching TV or surfing. If it gets cool, I put a throw over my knees and pretend I’m on a cruise in the olden times – but not on the Titanic because that wouldn’t be very much fun.

We store our deck chairs in the cellar; there’s too much rain to leave them in the patio; it would age them prematurely. There’s not enough space anywhere else in our small city flat, so the deck chairs are generally wedged in behind the hoover and the recycling bin. My Man doesn’t use the deck chairs so much because of the hassle of taking them out and putting them away. It’s kind of like a couple of pasta plates we have. They are an awkward size and don’t fit nicely into our dishwasher. The Man refuses to use those plates. I’m of the opinion that the pleasure of eating off them outweighs the inconvenience of having to think like an engineer in order to load the dishwasher.

If My Man beats me to the putting of things into their rightful place, which he generally does because he is a neat and tidy person -- I’m more of an Oscar than a Felix – and if either the awkwardly sized pasta plates or deck chairs are among those things to be put away, then there will surely be an uncomfortable ruckus while My Man pulls and pushes, grunts, mutters under his breath; his forehead vein will swell; Spanish curse words will flow, and The Dog will cower behind me with her non-existent tail between her legs. All in all, it’s much better for the tranquillity of the household if I get to putting away the awkward items before My Man gets to it.

I’m sitting in one of the deck chairs now. I’ve had to move it into the shade because the sun was putting me into a stupor and probably making me all red in the face and/or looking like I’m about to die. I hope to remember to put it away.

Winner Is

Truth be told, it's not my favourite of the few I submitted. The theme was "London Landmarks". This one is fairy princess bucolic (if London can be bucolic). I personally like a bit more grit.

Prizes Awarded

I clutched my prize as I stepped down the escalator in Holborn station. It was in a brown cardboard box. Nothing too heavy or too big, but big enough that I had to kind of peer over the corner in order to see the next step I needed to step on. Sometimes I get dizzy when I'm rushing down the escalators. Like today, peering over the box to the next step, I frightened myself just a wee bit. I thought I might accidently propel myself to the bottom. For a flash I allowed myself to imagine myself a crumpled up heap of a pedestrian crash on the floor. I've dwelt on this thought before, but this time I didn't indulge the thought for long. I was eager to get into a carriage, find a seat, open the box, and lose myself in the much anticipated moment of acquainting myself with the contents of my brown box. I'd been looking forward to the moment all day. I had even thought about it after I’d gotten my morning beverage. As I stood at the corner of Kingsway and Great Queen with my venti (2 bags) darjeeling tea 1/2 hot water and 1/2 soya milk, I thought, "I can't wait to get on the tube tonight." It was a thought that made me pause, and laugh.

Since when does anyone like taking the tube?

Then I thought that, for as much as I sometimes like riding my bike to work, the tube has the advantage of giving me time for other pursuits.

This is what my prize was all about: having decided that it needed new artwork for the walls (the present artwork being rather dated), my company held a photography competition. Winning entrants will have their winning photos blown up, framed, and hung up in our place of work as art!...oh, and yeah, we'll get a prize!

I won! I won!

Whilst I wasn't THE winner, my photo did place, thereby earning me a prize.

The prize didn't originally come in a brown cardboard box big enough to make walking down the Holborn escalator a dizzying experience. It had originally come in a small white envelope. A single sheet of paper worth £50 quid at an online bookstore transformed into thousands of pages held in a brown cardboard box, held in my arms in anticipation.

I had no idea how much 50 quid could buy. Here's how much:

The White Tiger
Asleep
Kitchen
A Bend in the River
Slaughterhouse 5
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Kafka on the Shore
Mao: The Unknown Story
Hitler and Stalin
Paris 1919 Six Months that Changed the World

Woohooo!!!

Tourist Prioritises

A tour of Krakow's Jewish quarter will contain multiple references to Steven Speilberg and "the Schindler's List." You'll see a staircase under which a girl hid from the Nazis. You'll see the field where Jews laboured, and you'll learn that the Lead Nazi in the movie (Ralph Fiennes) couldn't have shot the Jews from his portico because the house wasn't positioned in a way to make this feasible 'in the real life.' You'll see Schindler's factory, which is on its way to becoming a museum (scheduled to properly open in 2010). You'll see the remnants of the wall that kept Jews cloistered in their ghetto.

An hour and 45 minutes outside of Krakow will bring you to Auschwitz where you might be offended, as I was, by displays of nationalism: the Israeli flag wrapped around the shoulders of teenagers, the Israeli flag carried high leading groups through the bunkers and by 'The Death Wall'; somehow it doesn't seem appropriate; it seems distasteful to colour the memorial with modern symbols - rightly or wrongly politicised.

Certain aspects of the memorial will grip you by the neck, wring your heart, and make you weep as if this monstrosity meant something to you ... personally.

You might wonder if there is an element of voyeristic masochism in your coming to see this place.

Do you derive some sick pleasure in seeing where 'it' happened?

The children and the endless names hit hardest. Pictures of children emaciated -- starvation, a wartime weapon. Pictures of lifeless children -- innocence was no escape. Pictures of the ones who were interned, in happier times. They didn't know what was going to hit them. Too many pictures. You can't do justice to them all. You can't pay your respects; there are just too many. As there are just too many names. There are rooms that are empty save the names of victims inscribed in neat rows across the walls. There are too many names. The names blur into murky nothingness through the tears.

It all makes the outrage of being cheated by a Krakow cabby rather petty.

Secrets Revealed

The Honest Scrap is a meme. 10 things about yourself that no one else knows. Tag 10 others, link to them, link to your tagger etc. This guy got me.

I am, for the most part, an open book. Consequently, I'll be hard-pressed to come up with 10 things that no one knows about me. I'll do my best -- and in doing so, I'm likely to wander into the grotesque. Best not read on if you are squeamish or will be severely disappointed by the knowledge that ...

(1) Sometimes when I'm listening to my Walkman during a commute and I think it's going to be a silent one, I let out a fart. Then I realise I don't really know if it was silent or not - since I couldn't hear anything but my music. I look around to see if the nearby faces reveal anything. They don't seem to, but I can't be sure, and I begin an internal dialogue about whether my fart was silent or not and if my fellow commuters are in a conspiracy to keep the truth of my fart from me.

(2) I'm sitting on a purple sofa. I know that the the underside of the sofa cushion on which I am sitting has a big smudge of blood. If we ever have guests who inadvertently find this smudge, we tell them it's a chocolate stain. I'm too embarrassed to admit that one day whilst menstruating I had a huge leak. Stand back Old Faithful.

(3) I had an appointment with a gyno at the hospital. "Hi! I'd like you to tie my tubes please." The doctor looked at me in a perplexed, not-quite-shocked, possibly distasteful way. "You mean you want a tubal ligation?" That sounded right, so I said, "Yeah, that's it!". I allowed myself be talked out of the tube-tying ceremony and found myself leaving the hospital with a Mirena Coil embedded inside my insides. Within weeks my down below parts started to smell like a compost heap. For 6 months I sprayed my lower region with perfumes and hoped no one would notice the stench of my cunt. Sorry, but during those months, that's what it was. A smelly c word. Those were bad months for me and my sexuality and My Man. Fuck the Mirena Coil. My tubes are now well tied. (In pretty little ribbons, the surgeon assured me.)

(4) As a child I would fall asleep while fantasizing that the doctor in Emergency was my father. He would put band-aids on my knee and kiss my forehead.

(5) Later, my falling-asleep fantasy shifted to Magnum PI. I would pretend my pillow was Magnum's chest, and he would stroke my hair.

(6) I hate alligators, caymans, crocodiles or any sort of prehistoric, modern-day reptile with large teeth. They give me nightmares and make me want to puke -- like really vomit, upchuck, barf, heave.

(7) I didn't really like my friend from high school. She was loud, brash and insensitive to other peoples' feelings. Ten years later, the vagaries of time and space crossing paths, brought her and me to the same city at the same time, and I noticed mostly that she was small minded. Stupid. She invited me to a weekend party she was hosting for a group of her college chums. Since I was the 'odd man out' (a high school friend, not a college chum), she put me in the bedroom with her. During the night, she put the moves on me. I didn't say no, because I was at a weird point in my life. I was learning, but hadn't yet learned, how not to be a victim. I let the evening play out. At first light I collected my things, scampered away, and never spoken with that girl again.

(8) When I donate blood, I look around at the other donors and the blood-taking workers and think they all look dire and grim and drab and gray. I think I don't belong. Then I have to tell myself to shut up. I won't be too good for their blood if I ever need it some day.

(9) I've signed up to be a bone marrow donor. My motivations are not altruistic. I'm looking for accolades, but I wonder if I will chicken out if they find a match.

(10) When The Man goes out of town, I sleep with The Dog.

Now it's your turn.

European Taxi Cheats 1

The act of getting into a car with a strange man defies motherly advice and common sense. With the exception of the one who marauded about like a recent lottery winner, plied female passengers with drug-laced champagne to later sexually them, the London black cab driver enjoys an honourable reputation. They are a well-tested lot -- having to demonstrate an encyclopaedic knowledge of the streets of Greater London. They work all hours and make impressive u-turns in order to cross over to the side of the street where a hitherto hapless passenger may be flagging a ride. I can only imagine the shenanigans that get under way in the spacious cavern behind the glass partition. I am ashamed to admit that there was one time when I fell into a drunken stupor in the back of a black cab. I was startled and embarrassed when the cabbie, upon reaching my address, had to waken me from my drunken power nap.

"Hey lady. Lady! Lady! You're here."*

I was lucky. For months afterwards I viewed the black cab drivers as London's everyday heroes.

They get people home!

If only other cities were so lucky.

There is a bastard in Brussels.

The day before, I had taken a taxi from the very same hotel in central Brussels to the very same business park on the outskirts. The day before, I had anticipated a hefty surcharge on the taxi, for on that day, all of Brussels' public transportation was on strike. Taxis were in demand and could charge a premium. The final bill: 25 Euros. Not as bad as I had anticipated.

The day after the day before, before I even set foot into the taxi, I knew the driver was a bastard. He had swerved his car in response to the bellhop's gesture and landed into the space in front of the central Brussels hotel with the masculine, angry bravado of a gladiator on speed or coke. He was all twitchy and beady-eyed. The bellhop and I exchanged knowing glances. I should have asked for another taxi, but I'm too polite. The bellhop should have insisted on finding me another taxi, but he was probably too afraid. The bastard wove through traffic at a frantic pace. A woman pedestrian yelled at him for some kind of pedestrian-threatening, Belgian infraction. He caught my eye in the rear view mirror; his brooding eyes challenged me to say something. I slunk back into the seat. I couldn't wait to get to the office park. After more heated words exchanged, this time with a cyclist, we eventually got there.

After a lot of button pushing, the meter read 50 Euros. I explained it wasn't possible; the day before the same journey had cost 1/2 as much and under exceptional circumstances! He threatened me with grumbles. I flung the bills at him but made a show of taking a picture of his license plate with my camera phone.

While I waited for my customer to collect me from the lobby of the main building of the office park, the bastard strolled in, a contrite tic to his face. He "explained" that he had called the taxi company to see if there had been any reports of problems with the meter in the taxi he was driving. "Et voila" he gestures, it was all a mistake ... he'd charge me only what the taxi driver the day before had.

What a deal.

Nontheless, I felt vindicated. I had had the balls to say something and the soundness of mind to take a sufficiently threatening action.

I wasn't so lucky in Krakow.

It's just too easy for taxi drivers to take you for a ride.

* I was tempted to replace 'lady' with 'miss' in order to make me seem younger (looking). I don't remember what he might have said (shouted) to wake me up. 'Lady' sounds truer.