We begin with a journey...
A 49 minute train ride should be doable. One hazy Saturday lunchtime, no sunshine, no rain. Everyone seemed pretty upbeat (myself included, having just spent the entire tube journey snivelling tragically to Sinead O'Connor and making tourists feel chipper). We departed Kings Cross, everyone installed semi-comfortably with their giant cardboard cups of hot milk.
Yet crammed onto a packed train I quickly realised I'd chosen the wrong seat. At this point I suppose I should acknowledge that everybody thinks this, every time they sit on a seat, which happens to be on a train. Huddled amongst their silenct, captive audience, two twenty-threeish, self-satisfied londoners reclined. The boy, a modern Adonis, was adorned sweetly in a purple cotton jumper (sleeves rolled-up), expensively casual jeans and carefully tended stubble. He propped an elbow up with one hand, leaving the other free to expostulate and fan around one's chin with each loudly intoned opinion.
'I don't think… maybe I'm naive… i, i. i. i. think if the Sudanese, if the Sudanese, if the Sudanese….'
He boomed right over his 'ya like ya ra ra like ya', art-batchelor counterpart. It had all started with a racy account of her art-school days, where you just, like, got over it so quickly, in the first year, drawing each other naked. Nice little story about posing naked in red paint. Titillating for him, naturally still a little early for me. Like.
'Will you let me finish my sentence?', yelled another voice from behind. Some sort of events-man music manager was leaning forward and belting sweet nothings into my ear. And one of those mobile walkie talkies. He was appalled by the young outfit featuring in the discussion.
'Who was originally responsible for that compilation? They don't dance, they don't perform… Bruce Springsteen this or that. Give it another try. Nope, still shit.Speaking of Americans, NAME, what do we think about NAME. Do you know who she is? I'd have thought you would know who she is... Three videos. Bit of a triptych really...'
I was fascinated. Caught between these two odd and very public conversations. I looked around, trying to catch another passengers eye. I smiled at a girl but she was trying to eat something. The couple swam up into the pause.
'most people have some sense of justice… selfishness and how we talk about it....'
Back onto the Sudanese. Hot topic. He seemed to have read about that one. Possibly that morning whilst she was in the shower, or doing that elaborate top-knot thing with the scarf? Not in the Mail though, because they'd just royally slagged it off, then smoothed things over for equanimity by commenting, profoundly, that it was pot luck they were born on this island and it's what the greatest majority of people read anyway.
'In an evolutionary context it's probably better to work together…'
...then they were onto Philosophy with a capital 'P'. He was pretty fast to jump in on that one, so much so that he raised his voice just a little too much, even for him. Now the next carriage could listen too.
'…did a shit on the bed… '
continued Mr music man behind me.
'What? All the joy is gone now. As a record collector it's all gone a bit commercial. I used to enjoy reading people's blogs… nasty, brutal fileshare sites, nasty, commercial, people sharing. It felt like a secondhand CD shop, if that makes sense yeah? The flaming lips really HAVEN'T apologised. Really not.'
I looked around again, to see what everyone else was thinking. They looked pretty quiet and humble. Texting on their little phones, dozing, flicking through a magazine, or just pretending not to be there at all.
It definitely entertained me, to transcribe and read back these little bits of nonsense and share them, although when I thought about it I realised it really was a bit of an arsey thing to do. Just because although those twits were the ones loudly and publicly opining, immodesty was their greatest crime. At least they believed the tripe they appeared to be spouting.
In my case, however, I didn't believe a word of it. What a party popper. In fact I feigned modesty to pop these words down and felt just a little smug about it. On an Apple mac computer. Which I pulled out of my rucksack just for the task. Who's the real douchebag here?!
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