Defying Gravity

Dearest readers,

My sincerest apologies for not posting something sooner, life has been tough, money scarce and dog poop plentiful.

After nearly breaking an ankle on an uneven road surface (in flat shoes mind) it took me back to many moons ago, when I was still young and agile, and I fancied myself a cat burglar of sorts.

I lived in this relic of a house in Blackheath that was dank and dark and just a tiny bit rundown. Our landlady had decided to redo the kitchen and in the process fitted a new backdoor that couldn’t lock.  This wasn’t a problem as you had to scale walls and whatnot to be able to get to said backdoor.

I’d just started a new job and with my first pay I merrily went to my favourite hair salon in Woolwich Arsenal.  Laden with food shopping and quite possibly other items of decadence I arrive home via a very sweaty bus ride to find that I’d left my keys in my bedroom.  I’m not the best at remembering keys, relying on the fact that someone (especially in shared accommodation) would be in.

I knock on the door a fair few times to no avail.

After having sat on the front step for a good half hour, speaking to some friends on the phone, eating some of my decadent shopping on the front step an idea dawns on me.

Our Romanian cleaner’s little boy had once locked her out of the house when she’d taken out the trash, she’d climbed onto some building rubble, did a balancing act on the neighbor’s wall that ran against our back wall and reached the court yard bit where you have access to the backdoor that couldn’t lock.

It’s not the widest wall/ledge and the Sky dish is mounted against the same wall, but if the Romanian cleaner could do, it couldn’t be that hard, could it? How wrong was I?

Deciding to leave my shopping amongst the overgrown bushes in the front garden and taking off my shoes, I decide to give this house burglary thing a go. I’m going to be buggered if someone decides to call the plod and report a chubby redhead trying to shimmy along a wall for no apparent reason.

Mentally rolling up my sleeves I climb the building rubble, ok, I’m poked by a fair few rusty nails and sharp bits of concréte but so far, so good. Or so I thought.

Now I’m up there, I look at this rather narrow wall/ledge and wonder if this is going to be the best approach.  Seeing as how I’m here though, I might as well give it a go.

God only knows how I got onto that ledge, being absolutely petrified of heights. I’d managed to get about halfway across this ledge when all hell broke loose.

Being quite well endowed I can only squish my boobage against the wall so much in an attempt to flatten them. I tippy-toe along this ledge at a snails pace when one of the bricks decide to do a wobble. 

I try to grab hold of something, anything, and it just so happens to be the Sky dish.  This sadly has only been bolted in with one bolt.  (It’s an old Victorian house, Lord only knows what they used for mortar, as said mortar has also decided to vacate the crevices). The bolt pulls out of the wall without much effort and I dangle precariously somewhere between heaven & earth for about a millisecond.

I plummet to terra firma right onto our neighbor’s begonias and pansies with the Sky dish still in hand. I’m almost impaled by garden furniture and the poor umbrella is now missing a few spokes where I smacked it with the Sky dish on my way down.

I’m set upon by the old biddy’s teacup poodle who proceeds to bark and charge at intervals while I’m trying I’m shush it still dazed and confused.  I realise I’m in massive amounts of trouble, having just vandalized someone’s garden and garden furniture in a round about way.

I jump up apologizing, trying to explain what woes have befallen me when she proceeds to tell me she’s calling the police.  Great, just what I need.  To be charged with criminal damage.

Sky dish tucked under one warm (which has now been ripped cable and all out of the wall) and trying to refrain from kicking the dog to shut it up I explain rather loudly that I’d fallen off the wall as I was trying to get my keys which were in my bedroom and that my shopping was somewhere in my bush, ah, I meant the landlady’s bush or rather the house’s bush.

Granted, probably not the most coherent explanation but dang my ears were still ringing.

She looked at me rather dubiously, all disheveled without shoes, sweaty with a Sky dish under my arm. Why on earth wouldn’t she believe me? I tell her I have to go as I had sausages in the bush and they were probably now all mushy. This only garnered a raised eyebrow and I made to leave.

At this point nothing ached.  I managed to leave with as much dignity as I could muster, covered in grass stains, bits of plaster and quite possibly dog poop.  I make my way home rather dejectedly and plonk my dimply arse on the step again.  Shopping forgotten in the bush for the time being. Sausages and all.

Just as I was about to peer through the letterbox to see if someone was there, one of my housemates opens the door and with the force of pushing against the door to hold myself steady I propel forward, trip over the Sky dish and fall into the foyer.  Talk about making an entrance. Now everything aches, as the adrenalien has worn off. Bit like magic potion.

In short, torn ligaments in right leg and foot, cracked metacarpals in right foot, sprained right wrist, bruised tailbone and mushy sausages.

We had no Sky for about a month as the technician had to fit a new dish and rewire something somewhere. It cost me two trays of begonias and pansies plus a new patio umbrella not to mention the embarrassment of facing the woman again while she had her bridge club over. Lord, I was mortified.

The lesson to be learned here is to always pat yourself down when leaving the house to make sure you have everything, especially your keys, secondly, just because you saw someone else do something doesn’t mean you can, no matter how much you wanted to be a superhero as a kid.

From now on people Irish prayer: Please Lord, get me home with my spectacles, shopping, wallet & keys!

Not in the mooooood

To be compared to a dairy cow to some might be seen as a compliment, an insult or just plain rude.  Not that long ago at a children’s party of all places one of the very married daddies commented on my rather impressive boobage and said I’d be a very productive dairy cow.

I very politely proceeded to down the remaining wine in my glass (wine should be mandatory to all parents/guests present at kiddies parties) and pretended I didn’t hear the idiot.

Alas, my stoic silence was not met with the desired outcome and he proceeded with his dairy farm anecdotes. Wifey must’ve been at the petting zoo area wiping dribble or snot out of some crevice or surface no doubt.

Sir, I politely start, I’m not a sir he snaps, I work for my money. Alright then, I say sticking on my best frigid, fake, feral smile. What would you rather be called? Man? Tub of lard? Half cut twat?

Pick one, assemble all three if you want, but listen to me carefully, I will even speak slowly.  I am not a dairy cow, if you proceed to moo or make crude hand gestures in my direction I will make a scene of epic proportions, the like of which you will never recover from.

With this I march away double quick for more wine before I poke his eye out with a plastic spade lying around somewhere in an overgrown tomato patch.

All goes well, children fall off swings, seesaws and the bouncy castle like manna from heaven.  In the midst of my newest form of amusement there’s a constant wailing from various children that no one can establish the cause of and infant crying is like the plague, it spreads like wildfire and needs no encouragement to start.

Finally, a very distraught mother comes hurrying across the yard looking rather green, the only sheep in the petting zoo has literally dropped dead, hence the wailing. Sadly, it didn’t fall on the wailing child, otherwise it would have been a resounding success to my way of thinking.

Not very delicately the owner of said petting zoo drags the dead sheep from the enclosed area without an apology or backward glance.

By this time the wine has dwindled and the only beverage that’s alcoholic resembles a funny coloured Rose that tastes of vinegar. Beggars can’t be choosers in times of desperation and I fill someone’s discarded sippy cup with said stale tasting vinegar and proceed to smile fakely as birthday boy is encouraged to blow out the candles.

While everyone is cooing over the birthday cake (it was green with little plastic cars on it) married, drunk daddy stands right behind me, beer flavoured breath blowing on my neck.  As if that’s not bad enough he then proceeds to rub his now engorged member (have to laugh at romance novels’ descriptions of male anatomy) against the small of my back and bum.

Having now had enough I grab him by the nuts, do a sharp twist to the left with my wrist and can hear an audible breath being drawn in.  In his state of panic he steps back, falls into a plastic chair, which from years of standing in the sun and his considerable girth collapses under him right into some freshly left dog poop.

Oh, the hilarity.

When I’m not the unfortunate recipient of what karma dishes out, it is at times quite satisfying seeing her at work.

Occupational Hazard

If I had a disclaimer of some sort I’d insert the bugger here, sadly, I don’t, rest assured though that I wont be using actual names or pictures (this will become clearer later on).

In my current job I’m the general dogsbody and get to do everything. Crawl around the archive store, wash dishes, run personal errands (not my own) and make pretty horrendous coffee (hey, I don’t drink the stuff, I can’t be held accountable), added to this I still have my own day job that I have to pretend to enjoy and do.

At times when standing by the copier making endless copies of Lord knows what, a wad of paper will be thrust into your hand and demands made to make copies and return the originals to the boss or whomsoever else requires them. Most of these wads of paper are harmless, mundane things of everyday life, invoices, statements, witness reports etc.

I have a mental block when it comes to work. As soon as something leaves my desk I forget about it, until I am forced to deal with it again.

On rare occasions however, rather strange intimate pictures, letters and the like gets copied, when divorces turn nasty and people do so enjoy showing each other up, or pointing out their weaknesses. It’s massively cringeworthy, embarrassing and damn right upsetting. 

Whilst in the deli section of one of our local supermarkets last night a very unsettling thing happened to me.

I had this strange feeling that someone I’d clocked buying chocolate eclairs (the baked kind, not the sweetie) looked familiar. Now under normal circumstances I have a memory like an elephant, I remember amazing details about situations or stories relayed to me. No matter how long ago it was.

Failing to place the face I chalk it up to some peculiar case of deja vu and soldier on with my mam,  up and down the various aisles. We reach the fruit & veg section scrutinizing various items of produce, selecting and rejecting as we go along.

She picks up a rather misshapen cucumber and mutters something about how squishy this particular cucumber is, when it hits me. I know what eclair man’s pee-pee looks like. It’s bent at a funny angle like the cucumber, and he shaves his legs, amongst other things. I’d nearly wiped out a national forest making copies of him and his appendage in various situations. 

I nearly abandon the trolley right in front of the vine ripened tomatoes and run screaming for the car.  Sadly, this is not to be. Chaos ensues and I’m reasonably sure I’ll still be paying for therapy when I’m 80.

My mam drives over my foot with her trolley with such force that she actually manages to dislodge the shoe from my left foot, the impact of the fully loaded trolley sends me sprawling into the fridgy thing that houses the produce where wrapped lettuces and cucumbers rain down on me like an ill timed avalanche. 

As this point I’m not sure if I’ve been shot, stabbed, powder burned or snake bit.

My mam is doubled over with laughter, I’m scrambling to get out of the fridge and retrieve my shoe (with as much dignity as I can) that’s now hopelessly lost somewhere amidst the artificial flowers and sacks of potatoes.

To my absolute horror, eclair man saunters up the aisle,  spots the shoe, my bare foot and does the math.  He picks up my abused shoe and makes his way over to me. I take it this is yours he says. I mutely nod, and snatch it out of his hand. He probably has a very similar pair at home that he swans around in....

I bolt upright, sending cucumbers and lettuces scattering to the floor and walk with shoe in hand out the store to the car.  If I weren’t so angry, I’d probably cry. This might be funny in a few weeks or months, but right now I refuse to go to that store, I’m avoiding the front office at all costs but especially the copier.

Nowhere in my job description does it say that psychological trauma counseling is part of the employment package, nor is danger pay. After last night, it bloody well should be mandatory! 

London - a lament

I miss cold, crisp mornings when commuters fall on icy platforms and hot chocolate warms you right down to your toes.

I miss rainy days when the pavements flood and you get home with wet socks.

I miss sushi.

I miss St Paul’s churchyard and lazy lunch hours spent there.

I miss Camden Market.

I miss half flat Pepsi at KFC and Daffodils blooming in April.

I miss tube buskers and the dude at Liverpool Street Station that can’t really play guitar.

I miss Highgate Cemetery.

I miss central heating and my brilliant hairdresser Emma.

I miss Superdrug, the DLR and off licenses.

I miss the Cosmopolitan and Glamour, free samples and Pret.

I miss toblerone, the poundshop and New Look.

I miss my friend Stephanie and our long emailed chats (thanks for the letters though Steph).

I miss how my wrist aches at the beginning of winter.

I miss what passes for English Spring when there’s still frost on the ground.

I miss the cold. I especially miss the English cold.

I miss public transport, my books and CSI Sundays.

I miss having my nails done, colouring my hair whatever the hell colour I want and tattoo parlours.

I miss t-shirts that fit, stylish coats and red double decker buses.

I miss sav & chips, my puffa jacket and my duck down duvet.

I miss barbequing in Crystal Palace park, drinking cider under a tree and using the Su-Ria and Hennie establishment when nature called.

I miss having king prawn fried rice on Fridays after work, eating Cheerios out of the box and having time to myself.

I miss being able to do what I want, when I want.

I miss sherbert fountains.

I miss rainy days spent in bed reading all sorts of amazing books, old and new.

I miss the spritzer girls at Debenham’s perfume counter.

I miss bagels, cinnamon & oat cookies and 5 pack tights.

I miss chicken kievs, gammon with pineapple and Burger King Whoppers.

I miss shaking along on the DLR towards Bank, listening to my Ipod on full whack.

I miss reliable internet connections, online shopping and post that actually arrives.

I miss buying make up, M&S knickers and good quality handbags.

I miss my handmade fuchsia-pink leather cashmere-lined gloves. 

I miss the smell of my flat when I come home from work.

I miss affordable DVD’s, gadgets, magazines and BOOKS!!!

I miss being able to buy carrot batons, blueberries and delicious, almost black cherries.

I miss the daily mail.

I miss M&S’s chocolate milk, spaghetti carbonara & mac & cheese.

I miss the walks from work with Sash to Liverpool Street Station.

I miss being in charge of birthday, leaving, new-baby and congratulations whip rounds, and deciding on gifts for said recipients.

I miss amazing wrapping paper, envelopes and stationary at Paperchase.

I miss boxing day sales, mince pies and mulled wine.

I miss grit on pavements, patterned wellies and black cabs.

I miss dog walkers, ignorant pedestrians and self service ticket machines.

I miss the bus rides home, getting a seat on the train and Pimm’s & lemonade.

I think, in short, it’s obvious to say I pretty much miss EVERYTHING of London.

Stalker, stalker burning bright....

Following on from Matchmade in hell, I’ve recently been faced with a new dilemma, my mam very cleverly disclosed some personal information (which I’m very secure about) to some woman at church’s son.

Previously when she’d asked me if I’d wanted to meet this person, I was still in a relationship (albeit a long distance one) and rather politely declined.

So fast-forward six months, and some random person starts messaging me asking me how I am, what I’m doing and what I’m looking for in a relationship. Seriously, WTF?

Now as far as I’m aware I haven’t signed up for speed dating of any description, nor have I written any personal information in a public restroom or made up flyers.  He volunteers the following information, he’s ten years older than me, he’s got 2 teenage daughters half my age and has been divorced 4 years.  Oh, and he’s tired of being lonely.

From two messages I can deduce the following: he can’t spell, seriously can’t spell. He’s overly needy and clingy and is a complete doormat.  There’s compromise, and then there’s doormat.

The thing with me is, I become increasingly arctic when I don’t like someone. I don’t talk to strangers (self esteem issues), and when forced to converse with people I don’t know and especially don’t like (after invasion of such privacy as my phone number) I actually become feral, never mind arctic.

You get one word answers if lucky, or I simply don’t reply. I will only not reply if I’ve told you in no uncertain terms that I’m not interested. I will say, listen, we’re different people, I’ve come to realize from our exchange of messages that we have nothing in common. All the very best for the future (thanks Hennie for this very diplomatic suggestion).

I don’t think that’s rude, unfriendly or that I think I’m better than this person. I’ve simply established that we have nothing in common. Children are not a joy to me (he tells me I should have children, they’re a joy, and would no doubt have offered his services). I don’t have any, nor do I particularly want any. That’s my choice, and my prerogative. The world has enough people as it is. No one is going to cry and scream if I don’t go forth and multiply.

In the exchange of messages I discover to my horror that he knows where I work, where I live and wants to bring me a birthday gift, I don’t go round buying people stuff that I don’t know. That’s just weird. It may seem like a kind gesture, but I told the lady and the dentist’s office that it was my birthday, and she only said happy birthday for tomorrow.  She’s a nice lady. She didn’t buy me a gift.

At work it’s reached a point where I’ve asked our receptionist to screen all my calls, visitors and I’m tempted to say open my post. I feel I have to leopard crawl on the veranda at work when leaving for home, wear a disguise or just yank a paper bag over my head.

One of the things that really annoyed me is that when I asked my mam if she’d parted with my phone number she flat out told me no. She didn’t have a clue who it was, but I should give him a chance.

Now what sort of drivel is that? He might be an axe murderer. My body parts could end up in suitcases in ponds or something for the love of all that’s good and holy.  Give him a chance my eye.

Day two of weird messaging dawns. I haven’t replied to anything and just before we go home I get a message. What’re you doing? I work 5 days a week. What do you think I’m doing?!?

At this point it’s annoyance more than anything. That my mam thinks so little of me that she’ll want me to date just about anyone. Her that always moans I date people too old for me (2 years age difference is too old) wants me to date someone 10 years my senior, with 2 children in tow.  And this fool that keeps messaging me (and by this time declares he thinks he loves me).

I now approach my oracle, my second opinion, my go to guy and my life long friend, I give him the basic low down, tell him I don’t want to be rude but I’ve had enough. He comes up with a rather tame, diplomatic response which I dish out to the abovementioned fool.

Not ten minutes later I get another message, Oh, I was thinking I’ll take you out to dinner, or I could come to your house, we could rent a DVD, we could order take out. You can choose.

People, I am shocked, horrified, scared, and now damn right angry. 

My house is my place of Zen, it’s where I go to relax, be me, not wear make-up, poodle round in my pj’s and eat cereal out of the box. I have to trust you implicitly before I invite you to my house.  To now just invite yourself round, imply I want your company when I’ve told you no, is just freaking me out. Seriously freaking me out.

This might all be seriously amusing to some, but it has caused a massive uproar in our house, my mam refusing to see the error of her ways and calling me ungrateful, a snob and always unhappy.

I’m not the five year old with ants in my pants anymore, and by Jove I’m going to say when something displeases me.

My only option apart from swearing and being seriously unpleasant to this guy is to move him to the ignore list on my phone.  Having done that he sends his mam round to my mam’s place of work to enquire as to why I’m not answering my phone. What man of almost 40 sends his mam round to deal with his issues?

No, I haven’t fallen down a well, contracted amnesia (sadly) or had my brain cut out by aliens.  I am simply not interested. It happens. We’ve all been rejected. Move on.

I’m a great believer of Karma, and that it catches up to you at some point in life, hence I don’t want to be horrible to someone when they’ve been thrust into a situation (or have they?), funny how that’s only just dawned on me now as I wrote it. The bugger was in on it all along!

Ooh boy. I’ve been duped. I feel so used.....

Moving on (see, relatively easy). I now have every reason to be feral and arctic should he contact me again, don’t I?  Hell hath no fury like a redhead duped...

P.S. The troll has now started calling my place of work. Everyone is on high alert and I carry a taser in my bag.....

Childhood trauma

Many of us have childhood recollections of events that have somehow shaped, scarred, scared of taught us. I myself am fortunate to have many of these recollections, good and bad.

On Friday (06/07/2012) I turned a whole 28. I’m proud to say I still have my own teeth, bladder control and memory intact. I put on quite a spread of Friday and by the time I left work everyone was feeling rather full and in some cases nauseous.
The food was temporarily stored in my cubbyhole of an office until I carted it all outside on our picnic bench so my fellow workers could enjoy (which they did).

At no point has any food been dropped, or left in the office over the weekend.

I arrive at my desk this morning to a desk literally crawling with ants. The little blighters are everywhere, and now due to my innate sense of paranoia I can feel them walking on various body parts. I’ve swept them aside, I’ve brushed them to the floor with bits of paper, I took off my shoe in desperation and whacked a few hundred of them in the hope that they’ll all go away to no avail.

Finally I managed to procure a can of bug dope and liberally sprayed it everywhere, but they still keep on coming. Even through the lake of poisonous goo now coating everything.

Now I know Disney or Fox or Pixar or whoever the hell else tried to make ants all cuddly and person-like but they’re not.  One of my very traumatic childhood recollections involved ants, and to this day I cannot for the life of me stand them, especially if there are hundreds of them crawling over everything, including my cling-filmed lunch.

Many, many moons ago we lived in the old Transvaal as my father was busy with his traindriver training and it was closer to college, I could be wrong on certain facts. At the age of four we moved back to my current hometown as my mam was pregnant with my brother and my parents had decided that the city was no place to raise a family.

I remember the epic adventure it was to move house, how exciting and wonderful it was to run through an empty house and play with empty boxes, tape and bubble wrap. My first real road trip was the house moving experience and my dad and I did the long journey to the new place alone. My mam had gone on ahead to get the new house sorted and settled in.

So we arrive at the new house, and it’s not as big as our previous house. My grandparents weren’t as close as they used to be, but still. New house, new adventures. I turned five in that new house, we had an orange tree in the back garden and at one point our dog ran away. Strange what you can recollect from childhood, even as an adult.  Oh, I also locked the keys in the car once. After being told not to play in said car.



One Saturday afternoon while my father was pottering away in the garage I’d decided to do a spot of gardening. I’m not sure what I thought I knew about gardening but I knew that we had empty flower beds and that made me sad.

So, watering-can in hand I make a thorough muddy mess of the empty flower beds, yank out some of the neighbours flowers protruding from the fence and plonk them in our flower beds. Needless to say they weren’t going to grow and had already started to wilt by the time I’d done my gardening, but it made my five year old heart incredibly happy.

I’m sitting there, quietly, keeping myself entertained (which I’m still very apt at doing) when all of a sudden a massive stinging pain engulfs me. My legs and bum are on fire. I don’t know where it’s coming from or if it’s divine punishment for taking some of the neighbours flowers but it’s agony.

I do a mad dash around the house several times, screaming and crying as I go. My father in a state of panic (welding helmet still on his head) comes barreling out of the garage and runs behind me until he finally catches up to me.

What’s the matter he asks all out of breath.

Daddy, everything’s on fire!!!  Everything!!!!

Where he asks?

Just there in our front yard I yank up my dress and indicate where “everywhere” is. To his utter amazement and horror he finds himself faced with a dilemma, does he laugh as I’m covered in red ants, or does he help me put the fire out?

Decision made he starts my helping me brush off the offending ants, and through much babbling and tears I explain that I’d done nothing wrong and had just sat over there gardening.

I’m sure he tried to explain that I might’ve sat on an ant nest or that I was a threat in some way, but I’d had enough. As soon as the agony had subsided I filled up my watering-can (which I’d flung in the neighbours hedge) and sought out every single ant’s nest I could find, and then very merrily proceeded to flood it.

I’m not sure at age five you’re aware of the concept of revenge, but it must be ingrained in our DNA dating back to prehistoric times. 

To this day I still don’t garden, like ants or wear dresses for outside functions.

Matchmade in hell....

Now this might come across as ungrateful or callous. But I’m in no need of some small town bum who has now desire or inclination of reaching more in life than the local fast food joint or car-wash. Look, a jobs a job, but have some ambition and drive.

I’m very sure my mam and nan have only my best intentions at heart. I’m equally sure that parents would like to see their children married, settled, happy etc with a person they love and respect. This does not however mean that said child wants to be set up with various social rejects from (no disrespect) church, auntie’s so and so’s son, nephew, brother, cousin, neighbor or whoever else they scared or blackmailed up from the gutter.

I’m sure, in time, I’ll find my own man by my own means. Granted they haven’t been brilliant in the past, and I’ve been out on some howlers with some equally abhorrent creatures from the depths of Dante’s inferno.  I couldn’t have been more surprised if some of them sprouted horns and a tail. At least then I’d know what I was dealing with.

But as with psychopaths and deranged killers, they look just like everyone else and can come across quite normal. Until they open their mouths and you witness what’s spewed forth. 

No i wouldn’t like to be trussed up as the Christmas gammon, with a ball gag, ta. I’m clipping my toenails the next 600 Sundays from now. A shame, I’m sure.

This same rather frightful specimen actually dragged out a studded collar and leash and told me quite up front that I could have these if I wanted to experiment! Before I could gather my thoughts enough to come up with a reply, hê also told me rather nonchalantly that hê could procure several “gimps” that would be willing to wear said trimmings. 

I jump up, right, terrible thing’s just happened, flatmate rung, I left the iron on, fire brigade en route. Must dash.

I literally run out of said fashionable establishment coat, bag, travel-card in hand. I get on the first bus i see, never mind that it’s going to Shoreditch and not anywhere near London Bridge. Gracious sakes alive. I don’t know whether i should laugh or cry.

What hope does mankind have if society is filled with these poor delusional characters that think that what women want is to be tied to a radiator while he walks around in leather shorts pretending to dominate you?

Give me strength.

After changing buses about 3 times to eventually reach my destination, I sit and wait for the train to arrive. Not long after I’ve boarded I slump into a seat rather defeated and crack open my book.

A figure does the hesitation shuffle down the aisle and plonks himself next to me considering there’s a whole train carriage full of empty seats I start to worry.

 No matter how much I frown, or pretend to be reading hê tries to draw my attention.

Why me? Why now?

You know he says, I like stamps. I like licking stamps. I’d like to lick some stamps and stick them on you.  

At first i thought he was joking, but when looking up from my book, eyebrow raised, hê seemed quite serious. Right, I’ve just about had it now.

Sir, would you please mind sitting elsewhere, I inquire? Like outside? While the train is still moving?

Idiot wont budge.

Now he goes on to tell me he likes sticking nicotine patches on (you’ll never guess where) a certain part of his anatomy as he likes the tingling sensation.

The creep still won’t move and I’m forced to gather my belongings, gird my loins mentally and stand up.

Getting off so soon love? He slurs.

I choose to take the moral high road and smack him in the head with my bag while i move two carriages on to sit by myself and read.

Hurrah, next stop is mine and I get off to walk home. 

My plight will finally be over and I can relax in the privacy of my own home before i have to brave society again tomorrow.  Hopefully I’ll have mended my mental armor before then.

Two blocks before I reach my destination, I’m accosted by some man asking the time. Do I look like a talking clock? 

I choose to ignore him and just soldier on home, but there I made a mistake again. He’s obviously after something more than just the time. He's wearing what looks like a fake Rolex circa 1975 and it’s left a lovely green tinge round his wrist. So now we know what kind of character he is.

Oi, you uptight cow (censored for sensitive readers), too good to give the time aint ya?

You know what you need, dontcha? You need to be bent over....

Before hê can finish his rather crude sentence, i lose it. Hannibal Lectre that I normally keep chained up on his little trolley has gnawed through the restraints and he's out for blood.

I bash the creep with my handbag as many times as possible, he trips over the curb and ends up in the street. In the handbag bashing the contents of my bag is now strewn everywhere, I chuck everything i can find at this lowlife in the gutter, book, hand-cream, perfume bottle, keys, even my orange I was going to have for lunch.

By now he's gotten up, running away yelling at what a crazy b!tch I am.

Probably, but what did you expect from an Opera? A happy ending?