Smoke Camouflaged

This morning, whilst The Man was in the shower, I washed my bras in the kitchen sink. Clean bras were not my primary motivation; clean hands were. I had been smoking.

I don’t feel like a smoker, but every once in a while I go through a phase of a couple weeks when I light up. A lot. Since the current phase started, My Man, through the heavy steam and fragrant suds of the shower, has been able to smell my first cigarette-of-the-day cigarette.

He might be lathering his hairless head. “Have you just smoked?”

I will pause mid-step through the hallway-to-bathroom threshold.

The first time I will deny it.

“What? Are you crazy? Who, me?”

The second time, I will feel sheepish but will admit that yes, I did smoke a cigarette before I had even brushed my teeth.

On neither the first nor the second occasion did The Man say or do anything to make me feel ashamed, yet, I am ashamed nonetheless. Ashamed by my current (and I hope short-lived) addiction to tobacco. I am ashamed that I prioritise having a fag above oral hygiene.

That’s why I washed my bras in the kitchen sink this morning: I didn’t want the Man’s keen sense of smell to latch onto me again. I am ashamed.

As soon as The Man got into the shower, I went to the balcony and smoked my first cigarette of the day. Smoke clung onto me even after I had finished and closed the door.

He’ll smell you! He’ll smell you! God damn it.

I fluttered around the house wondering what I could do to disguise the odor.

Chewing gum? Perfume?

I spied a couple of bras in the laundry basket. They conjured a thought of washing clothes by hand. The laundry detergent felt sticky-yet-slippery as I gently wrung the water and suds though the softly-netted material.

That is why I ended up washing my bras this morning. And I it worked. The Man didn’t smell my bad habit.

Twitter Rivaled

After my recent fiasco, I decide to invent a new Internet sensation.  I will call it Chirper.  I will chirp.

Construction Noticed

As I stood on the median in front of the taxi rank at the train station in Utrecht and smoked my second cigarette of the morning, because, yes, I am flirting with that slippery slope of sneaking the occasional surreptitious smoke - things are rather stressful for me these days - I noticed a date embossed ...

Is 'embossed' the correct word when numbers and letters are etched into stone?

... upon the face of the ugly train station structure: 1976. The date and the distasteful architecture made perfect sense. I wondered at the decade of my youth and its poor output of aesthetically pleasing architectural renderings. Jimmy Carter was president, and the United States of America was celebrating it's bicentennial. I remember running around a pier in Florida at dusk with sparklers in each hand. I loved sparklers more than any other July 4th pyrotecnic. I suppose I liked having the fireworks right there in my hands.

At the time I wasn't aware that that there were enormous queues for petrol and that the economy was teetering. Now, with the wisdom of years I attribute all the ugly, yet pragmatic, architecture of the era to being a sign of the times ... Even all the way in Utrecht.

A Word Learnt

This morning I learnt that I hadn't known what 'pylon' meant.

I had thought it was a material - not a fabric like nylon, but some kind of alloy or man-invented-and-baked-up, ore-like substance.  Or maybe I thought it was a man-made structure out of stones to show you the way when you are hiking near the summit of a mountain.  'Pylon' was a word with which I was familiar, but, if pressed, I would have had to admit that I couldn't rightly define it.

This morning, the BBC had a segment covering pylons:  are they eyesores or not?

You've got to be fucking kidding me?

I am firmly in the camp that these giant, electricity-carrying scarecrows are ugly (albeit necessary for modern society, the well-being of the Internet, and blogging).  They are eyesores and conjure images of economically unfortunate children who have to play under the invisibly buzzing electricity, which likely results in an insalubrious outcome.

I remember one time when I was a child I accompanied my mother on an episode of motherly errands.  On this particular afternoon, and I remember it was afternoon because I remember the sun setting through the metallic venetian blinds of the errand-place where we were, my mother was on a mission to improve the walls of our house.  She had some paintings or prints (I don't remember which paintings or prints, but I'm sure they still hang in either my mother's flat or my father's house) that she wanted to have framed.  I was maybe 7 or 8 and extremely bored with waiting for my mother who was busy choosing the best mounting-frame combination for the artwork that required finishing.  I remember being so bored, but wanting so badly to be patient.  My mother always took an age on these particular types of errands.  In addition to the decision-making process itself, my mother was always having endless conversations with people who felt blessed to have such an angel enter their lives, if only to buy mountings and frames or groceries or for some other equally mundane purpose.  My mother makes people fell special.  My mother talks an eternity with anyone.  As a child, it was torture.

On this particular occasion, when the sun was setting through metallic venetian blinds, which I seem to remember being bent and broken (although my mind could be playing tricks on me - metallic venetian blinds are forever, in my mind's eye, shoddy and bent and hard to open and close), I was trying really hard to be patient.  Rather than pull on my mother's sleeve and beg her to hurry up, I tried to entertain myself by looking out the window.  The landscape was littered with pylons.  The sun was setting through the metallic arms and sinewy cords of the pylons.  I didn't like pylons then.  I don't like them now, but I know there are evils in this world with which we live because we like the world the way it is, and we are lazy to learn new habits and greedy for the modern kinds of satisfaction that some evils (pylons) provide.

I had completely forgotten about this particular memory.  I hadn't intended to write about it.  The writing conjured it.  Despite the associated feeling of impatience, it is a good memory - a memory of me and my mom..  Thank you, BBC.

This afternoon, on the train from one Dutch city to another I saw pylons in the distance.  A country as advanced as Holland is littered with pylons.  The sun was setting whilst I was on the train.  I wonder if the setting sun through the Dutch pylons had something to do with the conjuring of my lost mother-daughter memory.

Just in case, thank you Holland.  Thank you, pylons.  May we think of ways of making you less eye-soreful and more beautiful.  (And I hope you don't injure the children who have to live near you.)

Ellie Freaks Out

A funny thing happened on the Internet.

I was checking out my Real Life Twitter account profile, and right there - on the same page as the Real Me under the 'similar to you' section - was a link to my Ellie Twitter account. All kinds of freaked out, I immediately deleted my Ellie Twitter account; which, unfortunately, still appeared in the cyber world for some days (as the Twitter support people say it would).

Most worrisome was the fact that this blog's url was prominent on my Ellie Twitter profile. It all was getting too close for comfort.

What if someone in my Real Life is bored and browsing and clicks on this random Ellie woman who the Internet has deemed is 'similar to me'?

Just when I was starting to have fun with Twitter.  More fun with the Not Real Life Me account than with the Real Me account.  But not as much fun as blogging.  Not wanting to jeopardize this outlet for the Real Life Me, I clicked 'delete'.  Then I needed to go underground.

All a bit of a long-winded explanation for the recent disappearance of these pages. The other Twitter account seems well and good gone. Enough time has passed. I feel safe to be back.

People Sit on Trains

There seems to be some confusion as to where people should be seated.

I found my seat with a minimum of trouble: Coach 34; Seat 55. When the train had pulled onto the platform, I noticed that that the first carriage was 31. The second one that whizzed by was 32. Then 33. At that point I knew that I would have to walk down the platform a few feet in order to enter directly into my carriage, 34.

Once inside, I did have to squint to see the seat numbers. The ICE train is a modern intercity train. The seat numbers are discreetly placed. It would have been easier to see them if I had been wearing my glasses, but even without my glasses, I found my seat and installed myself without causing anyone any trouble at all. (If you don’t count the woman at the information counter in the train station whom I had asked to confirm that the foreign words printed on my ticket did translate into ‘carriage’ and ‘seat’, thereby confirming what I had suspected: that my seat number was 55 in carriage 34.)

Since finding and sitting in my seat, 3 people have erroneously sat in the empty seat next to mine. There is more confusion in the aisle of seats in front of me. It makes me think of Musical Chairs. We used to play it in elementary school on special fair days. The prize was always a cake that someone’s mother had baked. I never won the prize. Still, I loved playing Musical Chairs.

Musical Chairs is not so much fun on a train where there is no prize and only confusion - even when you're winning.

I scratch my head an wonder how hard finding one’s seat really can be.

Am I exceptionally intelligent?

I would like to think so, but no.

The source of the confusion, I deduce is the carriage number. People seem able to find the appropriate seat number, but they have failed to place themselves in the right general container. The ticket checker is called to sort out the latest bout of confusion.

He speaks Dutch, English, German and French. The woman he is speaking with speaks only Chinese. She calls down to whom I suppose to be her son. He comes and communicates with the ticket collector in English. He (the Chinese boy) and his mother are in the wrong carriage, the ticket collector pronounces. The Chinese boy and his mother move off to another carriage.

At the next stop when a new cycle of people board and disembark, the confusion begins again.