Working class germs

Passengers are requested not to speak to or obscure the driver’s vision whilst the vehicle is in motion.

This sign is near the driver’s seat on London buses.  We know what the author intended, and the formal style, motion, whilst, obscure, are requested, reminds us to respect the message.  The bus company means what it says.  Well, almost.  Speak to the driver’s vision.  Some people might be able to.  It's a bit spooky, though, for the average bus.

I wonder what the company would say if I rang their helpline to point out the mistake in grammar.     

Sometimes we know what we’re doing is wrong, or stupid, but we keep doing it anyway. When I travel around London, I play word games in my head.  I start with a railway station, take the short ride, say, from Liverpool Street to St Pancreas, then move on by tube and bus to Cockfisters or Dickhead.  You can probably think up better ones.  

I got this letter from Adelaide, South Australia, from the cultured eastern suburbs.

One of the concreters has flu, according to him.  It's probably just a heavy cold, but either way we don't want to catch anything, so I had the dilemma of flu germs on the coffee mug after he'd had the coffee I made him. My husband wisely suggested finding an old mug, then throwing it away afterwards, because I didn't want it germing up the kitchen sink.  This was fine until they had to finish early and come back today, meaning another cup of coffee would need to be offered and I can't keep throwing away mugs.  I had to clean it somehow, so I stood it in the laundry trough with a little squirt of dishwashing liquid and poured boiling water all over it.  One cannot be too careful.  I dried it with a paper towel and now it's ready for his next cup of coffee on Monday.  The irony is, of course, that this cup of uncleanliness and germs is probably much cleaner now than my daily cups and dishes washed all together in the kitchen sink.

I like the scepticism, the nervous energy, the shared commitment, the regard for duty, the thrift, the creativity, and the meticulous care.  The sense of irony. 

I like the workman.  He didn’t ask if the mug was clean.

Bike sex

Seven years ago, a man in Scotland was caught having sex with a bicycle.  I missed it somehow.  It’s not a piece of news you’d forget.  A few days ago, the story popped up again on the BBC website, in the ‘most read’ section.  Thanks to the internet and our fascination with sexual content, the world is going to laugh at him forever.  Flogging a dead bike.

Most of us have experimented sexually.  Positions, people, places.  Some of us do it with animals, or corpses.  One of us, at least, with a bicycle.  But we are usually more careful, or luckier, than our Scottish friend.  Think back.  The last time you locked your bedroom door, then did something wicked, were sturdy women with mops in their hands waiting outside?

He lived in a hostel.  He must have thought he was safe in his own room, with his own bicycle.  He wasn’t outside the local school, or carrying it on the train.  (At peak times, only folded – Kama Sutra.)  It was right between his legs when the cleaners walked in.  They said they knocked.  Two ladies.  That was bad luck.  Men might have blinked.  And how many cleaners do you need for a single room? Two, obviously.  More bad luck, but convenient for the magistrate.  Two against one.  Our friend couldn’t deny it.

The BBC said he was “caught trying to have sex with his bicycle.”  He was charged with “simulating sex,” found guilty and sentenced to three months on probation.  I expect he was moving his hips in a certain way, like a bicycle pump, at the rear of the machine.   Three months’ probation for simulating sex.   What if he’d really done it?  What if he’d screwed the bells off his beloved bicycle?  They would have thrown away the key. 

For some men, a car is like a girlfriend, one you can’t get into the bedroom.  Our friend, Biceps Femoris, loved a bicycle, and he got it into his room.  He deserves a medal, or a yellow jersey.  Recently, young men in tight pants humped their two-wheelers around the English countryside.  People watched and cheered.  Women were among the crowd.  Some of them were probably cleaning ladies.  The police did nothing. 

Le Tour de France.  Apt name for an event on this side of the Channel. 

I said magistrate, but they’re not magistrates up there, are they?  They’re sheriffs.  Like Tombstone or Nottingham.  The Sheriff of Ayr proclaimed: “In almost four decades in the law I thought I had come across every perversion known to mankind, but this is a new one on me. I have never heard of a ‘cycle-sexualist.'" 

Neither have I.  Sexualist.  That’s a word in Scotland.

In the BBC report, there’s a picture of a bicycle chained to a fence.  These days, in England, at least, victims are treated with more compassion.  They are not arrested, let alone chained.  A bicycle can’t defend itself.  Its very structure invites abuse.  It is made to ride.  Town bicycle – you know what that means.  Although we are not told the gender of this machine, a barrister could twist things around to show that she brought it on herself.  As for the Sheriff, a male bike would provoke him even more, and what if it was only a few years old?

The importance of staying on green

When I was at school, there was a boy named Birdseye.  Our teacher called him Bird’s beak, Birdbrain, and so on.  I thought it was funny.  My name wasn’t Birdseye.  Or Wurm.  Sir called him Grub.   He didn’t connect the two, bird and grub.  These days, insults only come from little beaks.  Teachers get the sack. 

Home time.  I slipped out of the girls’ school and reached the bus stop, safe back in the adult world.  You’d think.  A group of girls had come through the gate behind me.  When they saw me at the bus stop, they chorused “Hallo, sir,” suggestively, the way that only teenage girls can do, but everybody understands.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said the man next to me.  He didn’t have to say it so loud.  “Male teacher at a girls’ school.  He must be gay.”

    Chigwell Row

     
            Move on.  I made it to Hainault.  It’s an outer London suburb.  I got off the train and walked towards the bus stop for Chigwell Row, which is up the hill, where it’s green, and there are lots of trees, with a church on top.  I don’t live there.  I was helping a wealthy Russian with her English. 

The bus stop is next to the station.  I was almost there when a man dropped his bag on the footpath in front of me.

“Can you pick it up for me, please?” 

It wasn’t pretty please.  I looked at him.  He was about my age.  He wasn’t drunk.  When I didn’t bend down straightaway, he carried on speaking, like someone who needed to finish a script.  But his tone was harder.

“I asked you to pick it up for me.” 

“I thought you dropped it on purpose.”

“Fuck off!”

He walked on, I walked on, we continued with our afternoon.  I wonder how long he’s been doing that, in Hainault of all places, and how he hasn’t been stabbed to death. 

It was very hot, a nice day for the beach.  I’d just got sand in the face.   The road outside Hainault station doesn’t look much like a beach, except for the litter and the bare-chested youths.  I don’t remember if Hainault made the news during the riots.  It doesn’t mean there weren’t any riots.  The youths of Hainault may have intended to riot, perhaps some of them even thought they were rioting, but people didn’t notice any difference, and it wasn’t reported.

          A child’s mother once called me a wanker.  Parents, like children, can say things teachers can’t.  In some schools you can’t even discipline the children.  I mean you’re not allowed to.  I was sent to a primary school in Hackney.  It’s London’s Wild East.  The deputy head explained their ‘traffic light’ system.  A lot of schools have it.  All the children start on green.  If they’re bad, their names are moved to yellow.  If they’re bad again, their names are moved to red.  She emphasised the importance of staying on green.  I thought she might have told the children that, not me.  The class teacher said the children never stopped talking.  I thought she might have told the children that, not me.  

           She came in later while I was teaching.  The children were completely quiet.  She was amazed.  Then she saw the traffic lights.  A lot of names on yellow and red.  She was horrified.  I was thrown out before lunch.        

A Big, Fat Royal Wedding

We need some Royal news, something big to catch up with the monarchies abroad which are procreating and abdicating at reckless speed. 

How about another wedding?  You remember the last one.  The UK was a better place.  Weeks before the ceremony, the TV showed happy children lining the streets of London, waving little Union Jacks as if the wedding was already here.  Where did those pictures come from?  The children weren’t waiting for Wills and Kate.  Not that far ahead.  I hope not, anyway.  They were waving their little flags at something else.  Whatever it was, some file pictures had been cleverly employed.  It looked like a Royal Wedding.  Perhaps it was.  There has been more than one.  The BBC was misleading us again, but for once it didn’t matter.

Adults were also happy just looking at the range of children, black, white and brown.  Liberals enjoyed the ethnic mix; conservatives, the buzz of Empire.  On the real day, in the Abbey, the camera kept returning to a group of choir boys, a black one, a yellow one and a white one with glasses.  Are you wondering what will happen when their voices break?  You didn't see the men in the stall behind them, white cheeks wedged in like a row of perfect dentures. 

The roads along the route were cleaned up, too, but the wedding wasn’t good for everyone.  Anarchists were arrested and banned from central London.  They had once made jokes about Diana’s death, so it probably served them right.  But what about the squatters, living inoffensively in grand, old buildings, vast and vacant as cathedrals?  They were evicted in a single heap – emptiness is next to godliness – while the libertarians who normally defend them were distracted by the pomp.

Less enchanting than Diana’s, the wedding just reminded us of her.  In the papers, people said the bridesmaid was prettier than the bride.  They weren’t arrested.  We followed the procession on the BBC.  The commentary was so sombre it felt like burying royalty, not marrying it.  People complained.  They weren’t thrown out of London.  They watched the “Big, Fat Gypsy Wedding” on Channel 4 instead.  Channel 4 is very helpful.  It does the same at Xmas.  We get the Alternative Queen’s Message, one year a transvestite from Tooting.  

Another Giant FA Cup

May is a month that shows the importance of winning – exams, football finals and the like. The FA Cup is a favourite of mine, mainly because of its name.  I prefer it with two syllables – FA Cup – although it should be three.

When teachers here mention sport, they talk about the teamwork side of it, not the trophies.  I guess they know that most people are losers, and that children might become dissatisfied, then anti-social, if winning was more important to them than taking part.  Perhaps some teachers really believe what they say.  Perhaps they’re just losers. 

In a primary school assembly last month, the children watched a cartoon entitled Teamwork. They enjoyed it, as children tend to do.  I’m not sure they got the message, though.  I’m not sure I did. 

A dozen little birds were sitting on a wire, feather to feather, looking quite pleased with themselves, as little birds tend to do.  They were all identical.  A much bigger bird flew down and pushed his way into the middle.  He was a different colour and very clumsy.  The wire sagged because of his weight.  The little birds got sick of it.  They started pecking at the big bird’s claws, one by one. This seemed to hurt as he took each claw off the wire as it was pecked.  In the meantime, the wire kept sagging lower and lower.  The big bird now hung upside-down.  He almost touched the ground. Just one big claw was clinging to the wire.  The little birds could see that they were nearly done, so they pecked even harder.  Then two of them raised their beaks and looked at each other.  It was too late. The big bird eased himself onto the ground and removed the final claw, releasing the wire like a giant bowstring.  The little birds shot up into the air so fast that their feathers came off.  A moment later, they plopped back to earth through a cloud of floating feathers.  The big bird sat and watched.  When the little birds realised they were naked, they ran off to hide.

The teacher who was taking the assembly asked the children to comment on what they had seen.  They all said the right thing.  Someone pointed out that it was dangerous to sit on a wire.  The teacher agreed.  An older child said that the little birds were punished for discriminating against the big one because he looked different.  The teacher agreed again.  No one said that the little birds’ teamwork backfired, that revenge feels good, or that bullies win.  

Bi guy, 62, very open-minded dog

I saw this dating ad on TV and I thought, how nice, a fellow creature who won’t look down on you.  Pets can be picky, but one dog at least won’t snarl.  Then I was disappointed.  On the next line, the word lover was waiting to pounce.  The bi guy, 62, was an open-minded dog lover. 

It was meant to be reassuring.  You can trust someone who keeps a pet.  Daters, like everybody else, are looking for people they can trust.  They often specify genuine.  I’ve even seen Status no problem, just be genuine.  It doesn’t matter if your intended mate is married, as long as you can trust them.  But however genuine another man’s wife turns out to be with you, she is not being very genuine with him.

Lover and love are two words that don’t often appear on dating sites, unless they relate to a pet.  You don’t want to put people off, especially if you’re looking for love.  Of course, it’s usually more to do with fun.  It’s also pretty mercenary.  I like Must have own house and car.  It does make physical meetings easier, so it’s partly practical, but whoever posts this could sound like a money-grubber.  To tell the truth, on-line daters count pennies as much as penises.  They don’t write own house and car.  They put ohac instead.  And gen, not genuine.  No tws = don’t reply if you don’t want sex.  They abbreviate to save the credits on their account.   Think about it, though.  If you have your ohac and want to impress an f, m, cd, xd, tv, tg or ts, too many abbreviations might just look stingy. 

There must be people out there who are looking for love.  OK, it was just a thought. But there are people, apparently, who believe in ‘forever.’  What else can ltr mbm mean?  I saw this the other day.  Usually, the ad will run: text chat mbm (maybe more).  That’s where the ohac come in.  But what more is there after an ltr (long-term relationship)?  Marriage?  Exchanging smutty videos till we die?  One day, hopefully quite soon, I will stop having thoughts.

Before I leave you – no, I’m not dumping you today, or dying – a final word on pets.  There are people who let their dog, or hamster, watch them make love.  Watch, not join in.  Perhaps some people insist.  Sit!  I expect a dog would show more interest than a hamster.  A pet could also help if things went wrong.   I read in the news that a couple got stuck during sex.  

Offending your fan base

Offending your fan base presupposes fans.  Once you’ve got them, don’t let them go.

In Adelaide, there was a well-known journalist on a leading daily paper. This is a long time ago.  He had his own column where he commented on all sorts of things.  He could do what he liked.  He’d been popular for decades, especially with middle-aged women.  To tell the truth, what he wrote seemed pretty bland to me.  Maybe that was why he was popular.   

His admirers tended to be the old girls along the foothills, where the polite people lived.  In their letters to the paper, they regularly agreed that he wrote beautiful prose.  Whether he did or not is beside the point.  They said he did.  Most of what he wrote had some resonance with the older generation.  This was natural.  He was getting on himself.  He wasn’t just courting the older reader.  He wasn’t 19, flirting with Aunt. 

Still, I’m not sure why the old girls liked him so much.  Perhaps he reassured them.  They thought someone understood them.  Perhaps they just liked him because everyone else did.  He was very easy to read.  Anyway, his articles were the main reason they opened their newspaper in the morning.

For me, the most interesting thing about him was the manner in which he folded.  It was a kind of literary suicide, if not a conscious one.  He may have been complacent.  He didn’t see it coming. 

The old girls of Adelaide were picking up their paper, as they usually did, from the driveway or the garden, where the lad had thrown it; they were looking at the headlines, as they usually did, before turning to their favourite column.  What was it about today?  The shape of women’s bodies.  

He hadn’t done that before.  Something didn’t feel right.  Again, it all seemed pretty bland to me.  He had just set down, in his beautiful prose, the opinion that women of a certain age should not wear jeans, in particular the tight sort that teenagers wear.  They should show a bit of leg.  The naked leg, or even one in stockings, was better for an older woman.  He himself preferred the actual leg.

We will never know what triggered that article.  He probably saw an old girl in tight jeans on the bus into town or just popping around to the shops, and then wished he hadn’t.  We’ve all done that.  It’s not something you would imagine, is it, like a poet?  His mistake was to put his thoughts down in print.  He never said that middle-aged women have lumpy bodies.  He didn’t need to.  And now ladies knew that he looked at their legs.  He was suddenly a kind of pervert or at least someone who had grown a bit senile, a writer who had gone on writing too long.  None of his old fans were flattered that he noticed what they wore, at least not the ones who wrote in to complain.  No one defended him.

He retired, or the paper pushed him.