While running round Kennington Park – seven laps today; don’t worry, it’s only a little park – I note the people sitting on the park benches. Today there was a couple on the stretch leading up to Oval station. As you run past, you see seven snapshots. At first, they didn’t seem to know each other very well. By lap two – six minutes later – they know each other better. They have turned their bodies towards each other. By lap three her leg is folded on the bench in contact with his leg. Anyway, to cut a long story short, by lap six she had her head on his shoulder and he was stroking her hair.
Photo snapshots are actually a better representation of the way our mind works than continuous narrative flow. In life we perceive something, register it, interpret it, chew it over. While doing all this we have frozen the image. It is like a portrait painter. He notices something, then looks away, to his paint or his canvas, and then paints it up. It is, in fact, more complicated than that, for the painter takes a long time to transmit the impression to canvas, a number of examinations of the model, so that what he is painting is an aggregate of perceived images. In other words, something that was never there. Reality is untrackable. And so for the couple on the bench. Maybe my seven-split version of their story is closer to reality than their own more detailed versions. And by the way, in the seventh snapshot they were separate again; she was smoking a cigarette looking out into the park and he was fiddling with his mobile.

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The message on a teeshirt is never in the slogan. It is in the gap between the slogan and the wearer.

* Do Cool Shit. On a man on his smartphone telling someone to ‘Die of cancer’.

* Manchester Country Club UK. Which Manchester England is this? Not the one I grew up in.

* Besome One. In two words. On an old drunk stuffing his face with a family size pack of crisps.

* Everything happens for a Reason. Much appreciated by middle-class boys on gap years.

* Eat Sleep Rave Repeat. A mother pushing a twin buggy ignoring the crying kids as she blabs on into her mobile.

* A young woman wearing an awful lumberjack style shirt with sleeves coated in glitter. As she sat down next to me she started reading messages on her i-pad. I glanced across. She worked in the fashion industry. Another in the long line of professions where the practitioner is least suited to the job. Add fashion to nutritionits, psychoanalysts, hairdressers.

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A small (how to call it?) tumescence has been discovered in the house. It started with a feeling that something was not quite right, then an odour, an unpleasant whiff that hit you on the landing at certain times of the day. Then one of the lodgers tracked it down. It was under a patch of old rug that hadn’t been changed when the new fitted carpet had been laid, just an old bit that went round where the bannister and the top of the stairs created an awkward shape. Anyway, the… what are we calling it?… tumescence was there. The first lodger, Orly, didn’t know whether it was meant to be there or not. He just left it. Then one day he exchanged a look with Tegel which needed no words. And independently of them, other lodgers had words and managed to track the source to the landing. Now quite a few of the lodgers had noticed it, though when the matter of the tumescence was brought up, Tegel and Orly, as well as many of the others, found ways of not really registering the issue of the tumescence, mainly by the use of abstract nouns which said a lot while saying really very little. Until one day Tegel decided to bring up the issue of the tumescence over breakfast when all the lodgers were present. One or two of the lodgers thought it was wounded and needed assistance of some kind, but others left the breakfast table as soon as this idea was mentioned, saying that it was a historical inevitability that this tumescence would heal itself. Tegel said it was a minor excrescence in the project that they had set themselves. He used the word project a lot. When the idea of the project and its historical inevitability was evoked, many of the lodgers shook hands and agreed to have breakfast together on a regular basis. And so they began to have elaborate breakfasts together and ignore the tumescence. It wasn’t actually till a long time after that some of them decided to give it a name, at first a secret name because Tegel and Orly did not like the use of names, but then even they understood that the unnameable had to be christened. They called it Grexit.

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Jiggerypokery on the train between Poitiers and Tours. I get to the station half an hour in advance to buy a ticket for the 20.22, but the option didn’t appear on the ticket machine screen. The ticket office had just closed. At the Information desk I was told that these tickets are only sold on the internet. So how can I buy a icket for the train? I asked. You can’t, she said. The only option is to wait on the platform and when the train gets in, the controleur will step off for a few seconds. You must catch him and ask him if he’ll let you buy a ticket on the train. But the train is long and nobody will know where he will step off. And it will only be for a few seconds. I looked at him incredulously. Is this a game from Jeux Sans fontieres?
The train arrived at 20.22. and I am haring up and down Platform 2 with my bags in hand screaming Ou est le controleur?. I see him three wagons up and just get to him before he can hop back on.
– Je peux acheter un billet dans le train?
– Pas de probleme.
So I’m on the train when I do my rant.
– C’est pas normal. On est dans une gare avec une dizaine d’employes and personne ne veut me vendre un ticket. Et si j’etais un touriste ou une personne agee? D’ailleurs je suis les deux.
The ticket inspector is good-humoured. He looks at me with a touch of understanding in his eyes. I think I’ve made my point. I want to rant a bit more though. The controleur interrupts me.
– Monsieur.
– Oui.
– Votre braguette est ouverte (Your fly is open).
– Merci, I say. Yes merci (as I zip up). But that doesn’t change wha I was saying, does it? Braguette or no braguette.
– Parfaitement, says the controleur. Bonne Journee!

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I have made revisiting the past into something of a speciality. In Summer when the heat is upon us I pop up in various residences peppered around the UK and Europe, visiting at short notice people I haven’t seen for many years. Sometimes the smile of recognition is welcoming; sometimes confused. Most of the drama, though, is enacted in my imagination before the visit.
This year I revisited someone I hadn’t seen for, I believe, twenty six years. Here’s how I imagined it. I am sitting on the sofa opposite two of them in armchairs. They have just let me, a stranger, into their home. She, the old friend, is siting there bemused. He, the husband, bewildered. It is happening in French.
Him: (looking at his wife) C’est qui, ce mec? (Who is this guy?)
Her: (in a monotone, looking at me obliquely ) Je l’ai connu il y a 26 ans. (I knew him 26 years ago)
Me: (beaming, jocular, insouciant, oblivious, eating their nibbles) I like your rug.

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My dislike of Wimbledon goes back to my childhood when we were on holiday in Blackpool or Colwyn Bay or Llandudno, once in Scarborough, and when I wanted to go out to the sands everybody else wanted to watch the so-called Wimbledon final on a little old telly in our rented flat. These days nobody forces me to watch it but out of a sense of duty to the past I have it on in the background with the sound down but the medium wave radio on. This means that when I pass through the living room in my quotidian perambulations I can preempt the image by hearing the commentary about three seconds ahead of the telly. In this way I triumph over those dull players, who are perhaps the dullest of all sportspeople. You constanly hear that there are no characters left in the game today. In bygone days caracter was, in a jocular moment, handing a racket to a ballboy. The particular brand of mid-atlantic accent that afflicts all players from Croatia to Argentina is a dreadful monotone to the whole event, which we are forced to endure as meaningless interviews with meaningless questions unanswered by PR schooled players reminds you of two heavy juggernaughts trying to get past each other in a narrow cul-de-sac. There is also something deadeningly abstract about the television portrayal of the matches with a screen that depicts the court as a vertical wall, much like the image telly gives of a snooker table, and the disembodied grunts of two insects scuttling around at the north and south poles. It is a kind of elaborate flea circus. Why not turn it off? you tell me. Oh, leave me be and let me exorcize the past in my own way.
peoplearerubbish.com

Ice cream never occurs to me.
I stepped outside today – 32 degrees – and people had ice creams, cornets, lollies popsicles. These were methods of cooling off. They sat around on doorsteps and at bus stops. When the weather is hot you sit anywhere. And I thought: why does ice cream never occur to me? Maybe because I don’t love it. People love ice cream. It’s like fireworks. You say ice cream; you say fireworks. And they go Ahhhh! or Ooooo! I’m indifferent to both of them. Fireworks are a real pain because they entail you standing around in streets late at night But on a hot day… ice cream… why not? So I went to Tesco and looked in their big fridge just along from the oven chips. I bought 8 (eight) choc ices (£1) and 4 (four) cornetto-style ice creams (£1). At that price you can afford to waive your indifference for a day. Anyway, two cornettos and one choc ice later I’m remembering why I don’t love ice creams. I don’t even like them. I think I needed to have just one, a single old fashioned one sitting on a doorstep somewhere. A Choc-top Whizz or something with hundreds and thousands on it. And pay more for it! £3.99! A proper price. Now all those ice creams are sitting in my freezer rubbing shoulders with the kidnies I bought about two months ago.
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I have no qualms (when did you last have a qualm?) in stealing cherries or grapes or salted almonds from displays in supermarkets. I say stealing; I mean sampling. I feel we have the right to do this with a small piece of fruit. Probbaly not an apple or pear. I also am not averse to flipping up the transparent plastic sheet on a case of pick ‘n’ mix and sampling the odd jelly bean or even a fudge cube. This, for me, is part of the supermarket contract. But there are friends of mine who quickly scurry off when I am doing this, as though they are being associated with theft, shoplifting. I temember my dad used to do this supermarket or market stall sampling and we kids would cringe or blush or scurry. In a way I disapproved but in a way I was proud that he wasn’t afraid of the huge authority of the supermarket or the lesser authority of the market stall holder. When I do my sampling now I am half fulfilling my side of the supermarket contract, half acting in hommage to what my dad used to do.

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(This is a guest contribution from Boxette)

Leaving a party can be a very tricky business. London etiquette dictates that to leave early you need a valid reason. For members of hard working families this is easy: we’ve only booked the babysitter till 11! and off they pop, floating on a sympathetic chorus of we’ve all been there.

Work is another excuse but you’d better be a big hitter: We’ve got to skidaddle because Jeremy has to get up at an ungodly hour for a meeting with the IMF in Geneva. I know. It’s insane. But he loves it! fares rather better than someone who has low-level anxiety about all the things on their list but can’t be specific about what they will do first in the morning.

When all else fails, we can’t leave the dog for too long will charm animal lovers.

But what if you don’t have a big job, a family or a needy pet? Citing a super early Ocado order will not wash. Saying I forgot to water the plants is a slap in the face.

There is one final trump card that workshy, commitment-phobic, pet-allergic South Londoners can play: I’ve got to catch the last tube home can really open doors, particularly in Islington and Hampstead where the residents are scared to cross the Thames after dark.

But what’s this? London Underground has now decreed that the tube is to run all night. The last barricade has fallen. It will be compulsory to party till early morning, to stay until the shots are all drunk and everyone is seriously beginning to question whether they like each other.

The only possible remedy is to do the unthinkable. Move out further even than zone 6, into the badlands of Bedford or Surrey where the tube doesn’t run. Or get a dog!

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Many years after the Battle of Waterloo Geoge IV (was it IV? I think so) used to tell everyone that he had fought in the front line at the battle. Wellington who was now Prime Minister used to say to him when asked for confirmation ‘I have heard your Majesty say this on many occasions’. There is a language to use when asked to complement someone or something that can, if you are skilled enough, leave open the interpretation whilst appearing to praise. The word ‘roller-coaster’ springs to mind. When asked to comment on whether or not you liked someone’s book, say to the author that the reading of the text was a real ‘roller-coaster ride’. They will be flattered. Do not add that you dislike roller-coasters and that for you they induce vomit. You may find other terms that fit this bill. They are words that for many have a positive connotation but for you are negative. Here, as in so many cases, the more different you are from the throng, the more your capacity to retain ironic distance is enhanced.
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