It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning as I stand at the bar, pen in hand and think about what I want to write in the wedding book. It’s been a good wedding party and it’s been really nice to see old friends again. It has reached a point though where I realise that all my friends present, save for one are part of a couple and discussion at different points of the evening has pondered around who will be next. For my own part, I arrived on my own and I will leave on my own. I’m starting to feel a bit like Bridget Jones with a penis as a sort of philosophical melancholy begins to envelope me, due in large part I don’t doubt, to the evening’s alcohol.
I’m feeling sentimental as the pen touches the paper. I don’t want to write a standard ‘hope you’ll both be happy together, best wishes’ type message. I start writing and the more I write, the more gushy I get and in my mind I am filling the page with a tender heartfelt message to one of my best friends and his beautiful new wife. In reality though, I can’t see a bloody thing as I don’t have my glasses with me. The lighting is dim and my handwriting as far as I can tell is reminiscent of that of a two year old just given his first set of crayons.
And then it’s the end of the party, the lights come on and I hug my friend and his wife goodbye. “Here, have some cake” she says, “we’ve got stacks of it”. I take 3 pieces, wrapped up in napkins – I’m bound to get the munchies on my way home. As I leave I walk past two people from the party, snogging in the doorway, which only serves to remind me that I’m going home to an empty flat and I’m spending the night alone.
The night is cool and crisp and I decide that a walk from Waterloo to The Embankment will lend itself to some much needed sobriety. As I walk I pass beneath the London Eye and look up at the structure, reflecting on how in approximately 30 minutes time I will view it again from my balcony as a distant part of the London cityscape. As I look skywards at this huge bicycle wheel on London’s south bank, my attention is caught by shouting just 50 or so metres from me. A petite girl is arguing with her much taller boyfriend it seems, who is in turn hanging his head and looking like a schoolboy who’s mother has just discovered his porn stash. I watch the scene in front of me unfold as she shouts and swears at him. She animatedly waves her arms and pushes him away from her before stomping off, leaving him to follow behind forlornly. Phew, I muse as I shake my head, at least I don’t have to put up with that sort of shit.
I get to Hungerford Bridge and walk up the stairs just in front of the Royal Festival Hall. A homeless man asks for change. I look at him and shrug my shoulders “Sorry mate” I say. “That’s ok, thanks for not ignoring me” he says. Suddenly I’m feeling guilty, but I can’t give him any money as I’ve already said that I have none and if I give him some now then he’ll know I was lying. “I’ve got some wedding cake – it’s not much, but at least it’s something to eat”. I hand him one of the three pieces of wrapped up wedding cake in my hand. “Oh thank you, cheers mate” he says, surprised. “Ah, don’t worry about it” I say, as I turn and carry on in the direction I was going.
I take in the view over the city and a sobriety begins to descend upon me. Giving the piece of cake to the homeless guy has lifted my mood as I carry on across the bridge, itself lightly scattered with an assortment of couples, party goers and drunken teens.
I get to the other end of the bridge and see a beautiful German Shepherd dog lying down and trying to get the attention of it’s owner – a homeless person who is sitting on the ground, slouched backwards and seems to be buried somewhere within a Parker coat. I look at the dog and the owner as I pass and get to the top of the stairs that lead down to The Embankment. I start to walk down before slowing as I pause on the fourth step and look back at the dog. There is something about the way it is nudging it’s owner that makes me walk back up the steps and over to whoever is inside the Parker. I tug the sleeve of the coat “Are you ok mate?” I say.
Two hands reach up and pull the hood of the coat back from the face of the person buried inside. It’s a thin man of about 60, with short grey hair and a light grey beard, who has a look of total surprise about him. “Are you ok?” I repeat. “Oh, hello, er...” he says. I’ve no idea how long he’s been there or what his circumstances are and maybe it’s my lightened mood or maybe it’s the sight of his dog, but I want to help him or do something of some sort. I look at him and his dog “Have you eaten anything?” I say “Look, I know it isn’t much, but er..”. I hand him the two remaining pieces of wedding cake “There, it’s wedding cake.” He looks at me but doesn’t say a word – the tears cascading down his face say enough as he puts an arm around his dog. “Look, it’s wedding cake!!” he says. “Thank you, thank you, God bless you!!” “It’s alright” I say as I turn and head down the stairs.
I hail the first black cab I can find and climb in the back. “Where to mate?” says the cabbie. “Wapping” I say as I look out of the window at drunken revellers in the cold and think of the old man and his dog. Then I think of my warm flat, my tea bags and the milk in my fridge and I smile inwardly. Suddenly I’m more content than I have been all night.
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Wednesday 16 February 2011
Tube Journey
It’s a Wednesday morning and I’m sitting on a tube train reading a book and with half an hour to go until I reach the office. The seat next to mine was the only free one on the carriage until a couple of minutes ago. However, the stature of the guy who has taken it has meant that his buttocks have been forced to make a claim for the seats either side of him too.
Both he and the woman to my right have claimed the arm rests either side of me. The only comfortable position for me therefore, is to lean forward with my elbows on my knees and read that way. I get to the end of my chapter and pause for a moment to take a look at the other passengers. There is a girl standing in front of me holding on to the overhead rail and to her right is a thick set guy with a shaved head and sporting a good four days worth of stubble. He’s got an angry Millwall fan look about him, although he also has the volume on his I-pod turned up and I can hear Mariah Carey singing Hero.
The girl in front of me brushes against my book and I ignore her. She brushes against it again and I inwardly seethe. I can’t sit back because the fat guy and the woman with the elbows are taking all the room. I catch the eye of a lady sitting opposite me who looks like Judi Dench. She sees the look on my face and gives me an empathetic smile before going back to her copy of Howards End. I turn the page as the girl standing in front of me brushes my book yet again. I look up just in time to see that she is falling backwards.
She collapses on the floor between me and the woman next to me with her back against the seat next to my right leg. She’s fainted, or at least I think she’s fainted, as her head tilts back against the seat and her eyes roll into the back of her head. And then there’s an awful noise coming from her mouth. It’s at this stage where everyone around me has a look of ‘is there a doctor in the house’ panic about them. I reach down and untie her scarf. “Undo her coat too” someone says, which I do. “Can someone hit the emergency alarm” I say. The message gets passed back through the carriage from person to person, like gossip spreading through an office “Can someone press the alarm ”, “press the alarm please”, “the guy says hit the alarm”. Someone hits the alarm.
Judi Dench puts her fingers to the girl’s neck to check her pulse. I put my hand in front of the girl’s nose and mouth to see if I can feel her breathing – I can. And then the girl tilts her head back further and her chest moves forward and in a split second I realise what is coming next as I pull my hand back. Judi Dench on the other hand doesn’t and catches the full force of the girl’s morning porridge, to the tune of a collective “Eeewww…” amongst the other passengers.
“I work for London Underground” says a guy, “it’s ok, the driver will know which carriage the alarm went off in and he’ll stop at the next station. Put her in position” People look at him blankly. “The recovery position!” he affirms. There’s a collective ‘Ah yes, of course’. By this time the girl is awake as she is put on her side. People talk to her reassuringly as we pull into the next station. After a couple of minutes the driver pops his head around the carriage door. “Everything alright?” he asks before realising that it clearly isn’t. His colleague is assertive “We need to call the LAS!” The driver looks blank. “LAS?” he asks. The London Ambulance Service!” says his colleague, increasingly frustrated that no one understands him.
After a little while the paramedics arrive and tend to the girl. The platform staff inform us that the tube isn’t going anywhere fast and to go to the opposite platform where another will take us to where we’re going. Judi Dench has been wiping herself down. I hand her an extra tissue and give her an empathetic ‘sorry it was you’ tight mouthed smile. She smiles back in a shoulder shrugging ‘what can you do’ sort of a way.
Checking my watch I realise that I’m now quite late for work and so text my boss to fill him in on the morning’s activities.
“Running a bit late. A woman has collapsed in front of me on the tube and vomited all over herself. The Ambulance is on it’s way but we’re not going anywhere fast.”
Well it’s not a bad thing if I turn up earlier than expected. A few minutes later my phone beeps.
“No worries, we all oversleep sometimes...”
Both he and the woman to my right have claimed the arm rests either side of me. The only comfortable position for me therefore, is to lean forward with my elbows on my knees and read that way. I get to the end of my chapter and pause for a moment to take a look at the other passengers. There is a girl standing in front of me holding on to the overhead rail and to her right is a thick set guy with a shaved head and sporting a good four days worth of stubble. He’s got an angry Millwall fan look about him, although he also has the volume on his I-pod turned up and I can hear Mariah Carey singing Hero.
The girl in front of me brushes against my book and I ignore her. She brushes against it again and I inwardly seethe. I can’t sit back because the fat guy and the woman with the elbows are taking all the room. I catch the eye of a lady sitting opposite me who looks like Judi Dench. She sees the look on my face and gives me an empathetic smile before going back to her copy of Howards End. I turn the page as the girl standing in front of me brushes my book yet again. I look up just in time to see that she is falling backwards.
She collapses on the floor between me and the woman next to me with her back against the seat next to my right leg. She’s fainted, or at least I think she’s fainted, as her head tilts back against the seat and her eyes roll into the back of her head. And then there’s an awful noise coming from her mouth. It’s at this stage where everyone around me has a look of ‘is there a doctor in the house’ panic about them. I reach down and untie her scarf. “Undo her coat too” someone says, which I do. “Can someone hit the emergency alarm” I say. The message gets passed back through the carriage from person to person, like gossip spreading through an office “Can someone press the alarm ”, “press the alarm please”, “the guy says hit the alarm”. Someone hits the alarm.
Judi Dench puts her fingers to the girl’s neck to check her pulse. I put my hand in front of the girl’s nose and mouth to see if I can feel her breathing – I can. And then the girl tilts her head back further and her chest moves forward and in a split second I realise what is coming next as I pull my hand back. Judi Dench on the other hand doesn’t and catches the full force of the girl’s morning porridge, to the tune of a collective “Eeewww…” amongst the other passengers.
“I work for London Underground” says a guy, “it’s ok, the driver will know which carriage the alarm went off in and he’ll stop at the next station. Put her in position” People look at him blankly. “The recovery position!” he affirms. There’s a collective ‘Ah yes, of course’. By this time the girl is awake as she is put on her side. People talk to her reassuringly as we pull into the next station. After a couple of minutes the driver pops his head around the carriage door. “Everything alright?” he asks before realising that it clearly isn’t. His colleague is assertive “We need to call the LAS!” The driver looks blank. “LAS?” he asks. The London Ambulance Service!” says his colleague, increasingly frustrated that no one understands him.
After a little while the paramedics arrive and tend to the girl. The platform staff inform us that the tube isn’t going anywhere fast and to go to the opposite platform where another will take us to where we’re going. Judi Dench has been wiping herself down. I hand her an extra tissue and give her an empathetic ‘sorry it was you’ tight mouthed smile. She smiles back in a shoulder shrugging ‘what can you do’ sort of a way.
Checking my watch I realise that I’m now quite late for work and so text my boss to fill him in on the morning’s activities.
“Running a bit late. A woman has collapsed in front of me on the tube and vomited all over herself. The Ambulance is on it’s way but we’re not going anywhere fast.”
Well it’s not a bad thing if I turn up earlier than expected. A few minutes later my phone beeps.
“No worries, we all oversleep sometimes...”
Thursday 3 February 2011
Midweek Rendezvous - Part 2
It was a few days later, as I sat in the office and looked at my phone. Come on you idiot, just call her! I dialled her number and waited for the call to connect. It went straight to voicemail. Click. I hate leaving messages. Far better to spend half an hour drafting and re-drafting a simple text surely..!?
“Hey, hope you're well and had a great weekend. Are you free for dinner on Saturday night?”
The text sent, I got on with work. A series of back to back meetings during the afternoon had resulted in a pile of actions coming my way that were the result of someone else’s fuck up. My boss was receiving a lot of pressure from his boss and consequently had decided to put pressure on the rest of the team. The moment I started doing one thing, something else would happen and so on and so forth. By 5.30 I was tired and I’d had enough of the office and just wanted to go home.
Sitting on the tube on the way home, I felt like it was the first time that I had properly sat down all day. I had my nose in a book as I heard my phone beep. It was the beep I had been waiting all afternoon to hear, or so I thought: -
“Sorry, I don’t think we’re well suited. I did enjoy my night but I don’t want you 2 get false expectations. I wish you all the best. A.”
I stared at my phone – aghast. What the fuck..!!? I mean what? WHAT?? I was bewildered and didn’t know what to think. I stared at the message over and over. Had we been on different dates? My incredulity was gradually replaced with a sorrow and a sudden loneliness which was exacerbated by the stresses of the day. I looked up and noticed the number of couples who filled the tube carriage. Well there may only have been two or three couples and they may even only have been work colleagues for all I knew. But they stood out with a glow, like kids on a Ready Brek commercial, conspicuous by the warmth of being in a relationship – a warmth that I suddenly longed for more than ever.
I arrived home and made a cup of tea. My phone was lying on the kitchen counter as I glanced again at the message whilst stirring the cup. G phoned, asking how my date had gone the week before. I read her the text. “Oh well, put it behind you. On to the next one” she said, matter of fact. “Yep yep” I said, through gritted teeth, my eyes closed as I desperately tried to keep the lump in my throat under control. I ended the call and took a breath. Fuck it, I thought as I replied to the text: -
“Already had false expectations after you kissed me in the street for half an hour. Kind of wish you hadn’t now. My fault for misjudging”.
I hit the send key as I walked through to the lounge and tossed the phone onto the sofa. There, done! Time for a shower – what a fucking day, I thought as I stripped before opening the shower door just as my phone beeped. Get in the shower, ignore it! Which is why I went straight to the lounge and picked my phone up off the sofa: -
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to upset you. Please understand that things are not that black and white. I did enjoy kissing you – my heart says to see you but my logic says that things are not settled for me. Yes, maybe we shouldn’t have kissed. I’m sorry”
Bizarrely I started to feel a slight sense of guilt as the water from the shower cascaded over me. She had very mildly hinted during our date that she hadn’t had an easy breakup with her ex. She obviously wasn’t over the split and it seemed to be more of a timing issue than anything. I remembered my own experience of when I went through a very similar thing a few years ago. I considered my current sense of upset and realised that I had let self pity get in the way of clear thinking. I had to face facts. This relationship was looking like a non starter, not now at least. Surely there was something I could take away from it though? Whatever else had happened, I’d had a wonderful night out with a beautiful girl and we had spent what felt an age snogging like two teenagers. That wasn’t a bad memory for an evening out with someone I didn’t even know a fortnight earlier. I finished showering and texted her back.
“I’m sorry A. You’ve caught me at the end of a very long and not good day. I’ve been where you are now and know that it isn’t easy. I enjoyed kissing you and am glad we met as I thought you were adorable and I had a great night. That’s a good silver lining at least. Call me some time. Take care x”.
It’s not always easy to look for the silver lining in a given situation and sometimes I take a wobble when on the receiving end of a metaphorical punch in the face. But what’s the alternative? Well the alternative is to sink into a sort of morose bitterness that jades and makes one more cynical the next time someone shows an interest, and that’s not me. I’d had a wonderful evening and I wanted to remember it. My phone beeped.
“Thank you. I really appreciated your message. You are awesome. I will try to be in contact with you in time. Keep your go lively spirit. It’s wonderful to be around x”
Last year I needed to develop a thicker skin when it came to finding a job. Maybe my period away from the dating scene had meant that I needed to develop a thicker skin in other areas too. I had surprised myself at just how upset I had felt. But look, two weeks before our date I didn’t even know she existed. And that’s what I’m talking about. Life is so random that you never know who or what is just around the corner. For now though, it’s onwards and upwards. Let’s see what the next adventure has in store...
“Hey, hope you're well and had a great weekend. Are you free for dinner on Saturday night?”
The text sent, I got on with work. A series of back to back meetings during the afternoon had resulted in a pile of actions coming my way that were the result of someone else’s fuck up. My boss was receiving a lot of pressure from his boss and consequently had decided to put pressure on the rest of the team. The moment I started doing one thing, something else would happen and so on and so forth. By 5.30 I was tired and I’d had enough of the office and just wanted to go home.
Sitting on the tube on the way home, I felt like it was the first time that I had properly sat down all day. I had my nose in a book as I heard my phone beep. It was the beep I had been waiting all afternoon to hear, or so I thought: -
“Sorry, I don’t think we’re well suited. I did enjoy my night but I don’t want you 2 get false expectations. I wish you all the best. A.”
I stared at my phone – aghast. What the fuck..!!? I mean what? WHAT?? I was bewildered and didn’t know what to think. I stared at the message over and over. Had we been on different dates? My incredulity was gradually replaced with a sorrow and a sudden loneliness which was exacerbated by the stresses of the day. I looked up and noticed the number of couples who filled the tube carriage. Well there may only have been two or three couples and they may even only have been work colleagues for all I knew. But they stood out with a glow, like kids on a Ready Brek commercial, conspicuous by the warmth of being in a relationship – a warmth that I suddenly longed for more than ever.
I arrived home and made a cup of tea. My phone was lying on the kitchen counter as I glanced again at the message whilst stirring the cup. G phoned, asking how my date had gone the week before. I read her the text. “Oh well, put it behind you. On to the next one” she said, matter of fact. “Yep yep” I said, through gritted teeth, my eyes closed as I desperately tried to keep the lump in my throat under control. I ended the call and took a breath. Fuck it, I thought as I replied to the text: -
“Already had false expectations after you kissed me in the street for half an hour. Kind of wish you hadn’t now. My fault for misjudging”.
I hit the send key as I walked through to the lounge and tossed the phone onto the sofa. There, done! Time for a shower – what a fucking day, I thought as I stripped before opening the shower door just as my phone beeped. Get in the shower, ignore it! Which is why I went straight to the lounge and picked my phone up off the sofa: -
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to upset you. Please understand that things are not that black and white. I did enjoy kissing you – my heart says to see you but my logic says that things are not settled for me. Yes, maybe we shouldn’t have kissed. I’m sorry”
Bizarrely I started to feel a slight sense of guilt as the water from the shower cascaded over me. She had very mildly hinted during our date that she hadn’t had an easy breakup with her ex. She obviously wasn’t over the split and it seemed to be more of a timing issue than anything. I remembered my own experience of when I went through a very similar thing a few years ago. I considered my current sense of upset and realised that I had let self pity get in the way of clear thinking. I had to face facts. This relationship was looking like a non starter, not now at least. Surely there was something I could take away from it though? Whatever else had happened, I’d had a wonderful night out with a beautiful girl and we had spent what felt an age snogging like two teenagers. That wasn’t a bad memory for an evening out with someone I didn’t even know a fortnight earlier. I finished showering and texted her back.
“I’m sorry A. You’ve caught me at the end of a very long and not good day. I’ve been where you are now and know that it isn’t easy. I enjoyed kissing you and am glad we met as I thought you were adorable and I had a great night. That’s a good silver lining at least. Call me some time. Take care x”.
It’s not always easy to look for the silver lining in a given situation and sometimes I take a wobble when on the receiving end of a metaphorical punch in the face. But what’s the alternative? Well the alternative is to sink into a sort of morose bitterness that jades and makes one more cynical the next time someone shows an interest, and that’s not me. I’d had a wonderful evening and I wanted to remember it. My phone beeped.
“Thank you. I really appreciated your message. You are awesome. I will try to be in contact with you in time. Keep your go lively spirit. It’s wonderful to be around x”
Last year I needed to develop a thicker skin when it came to finding a job. Maybe my period away from the dating scene had meant that I needed to develop a thicker skin in other areas too. I had surprised myself at just how upset I had felt. But look, two weeks before our date I didn’t even know she existed. And that’s what I’m talking about. Life is so random that you never know who or what is just around the corner. For now though, it’s onwards and upwards. Let’s see what the next adventure has in store...
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