Greetings from Cafe Nero, just along from East Croydon station... or TRAM STOP, should I say! And why should I say, you ask? Because I've just taken my first South East London Tramventure, Tramversing suburbia and all things green and grim to arrive here, the mighty interchange on my way to IKEA.
Now, this is just one way in which I'm already making the most of my staycation, along with eating enough raw icing sugar to fulfil any woman's daily calorie intake and leave me with a hurty tummy, whilst focusing with heavy and skewed intent upon how this will impact my future chance of marriage.
What an adventure this has been. It was simple enough, Oystering myself on and finding a seat. Just looked like any other train, but then we took off, and i realised you could see the tracks in front of the driver, tracks I'd run around in my training, as we scooted through a chain of disparate, quiet stops. Starting in Beckenham, of course, there weren't too many of us about, but this quickly changed, and I was given the unique opportunity to study a certain type of human being. A tram person is a person who takes the tram to work or school or to the shops or the benefits office or wherever they spend their time. Most of them looked normal. You might have seen them on the bus, casually dressed chaps heading somewhere with a crumpled copy of The Mail, perspiring mothers with pushchairs and school kids on half term, heading over to somebody's for a video night, or as they call it these days, drinking white lightning and happy slapping strangers. Although even that might be a little 2006, I think.
I was enjoying one chap's pretty strange face - really long, it was, when I was distracted by somebody's mobile phone going off by mistake. Politely I looked over to discover the pudgy, Sports Direct styled young chap in the corner had pushed his lips into a sort of kissing shape, and was moving his head, almost rhythmically, back and forth, as if hypnotised by his own mobile telephone device. I caught his eye, just about the same moment I burst out laughing, and had to pretend it was sheer hip hop enjoyment that tickled me so. Predictably, he was intelligent enough to buy this, and no sooner had I calmed my tram-based hysteria than another fine young melody was struck up in the next carriage section.
Nobody batted an eyelid. This is the tram! Where a man can be a man and nobody can stop him expressing himself and his utter coolness! I was beside myself when we arrived in Croydon. This is my new favoured form of transport!
Meanwhile, a small reflection on the 4-day Jubilee holiday that has inspired this extended weekday sojourn. I can't say I write to lament at anything I see, and if any journalist does, it's probably because they either just split up with their girlfriend, had a bad curry, or genuinely do exist in a bad part of the world.
Middle England... and my little section of South East London, however, is not one of those parts of the world, so although I may mock, I write to celebrate with affection the glorious stupidity of my daily environment. And what a celebration we have seen! Proud parades of plopping horses and handsome uniforms, one great British music concert broadcast live to the nation, fireworks that frankly looked just a little too much like someone had razed Buckingham Palace, a flotilla that lit up the grey Thames like Walt Disney himself had just stuck a paint brush on the scene, and a nation, an entire nation of merry, jubilant, face-painted, flag-waving, flushed, shiny faces, all bopping along in a symphony of national pride and utter tastelessness, enjoying picnics, horrific calorie counts, food poisoning, fancy dress and organised fun - the lot, the usual - all decked out in bunting.
Touching as it all is, and whether you engaged in the festivities much or not, the finest moment for me was the small gasp of emotion even our steely-faced monarch allowed herself at her son's touching tribute on stage at the concert. Now perhaps it was just a little gas from one's cucumber sandwiches, but I like to think that all that national love might have just, for a moment threatened to get the better of her cool demeanour. It touched me in the way it does to see my mother moved by something - which I like to think she was too at that moment, sitting on the sofa just next to me, having enjoyed a good bit of Macca and a little Stevie Wonder.
Furthermore, the quintessentially lovely part of it all, has to be this tempered outpouring of national pride. For a nation exporting mainly biscuit recipes and stiff-lipped repression, I am proud that even in my most gushy, indulgent moments, I have the common sense to hold it all in - just a little bit, so as not to cause disgrace. Now that might not be the case for our rotund hip-hop friend on the tram, or indeed the ridiculous young couples that have landed beside me here in Cafe Nero and are now creating a toilet queue as long as the Nile whilst they change their soiled progeny, but some things about this country and these people ARE worth celebrating. And it's Great British modesty and decorum.
Not mine, I add. Pass the icing sugar.
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