Jan 11, 2002
Bad
I did a bad thing tonight.
I realised at some point between Edgware Road and Baker Street stations that the man standing next to me with his nose in a french novel was F, who I’d been to university with, and who had lived in the flat below mine in Liverpool in 1993.
He was home-counties posh, and he knew it – older than most of us, a mature student, with years in the OTC behind him. He had a habit of getting roaringly drunk and shouting Hamlet out of his bedroom window – which irritatingly, was directly below mine. I got into a corresponding habit, at three o’clock in the morning, of writing “SHUT UP F——!” in thick black marker on a bit of A4 paper, attaching it to a clipboard, looping the top of the clipboard with a bungee cord, attaching the other end of the cord to the belt of my dressing gown, and lowering the notice slowly in front of his window – just out of his grasp, but near enough to make a point.
He owned a battered old combi van and used to charge us 50p for a trip to the supermarket. We met again briefly last year at a restaurant in Soho, and had little to say to each other. Perhaps that’s why tonight, when I saw him standing next to me on the train, I didn’t say anything at all, but hid in my book.
Is that a terrible thing?
