meish dot org: life, unfolding

White ribbons drooping from cutaway like-a-virgin lacy gloves, and with soft scarves and loose threads dangling from her bag, her jacket, her waist, her ponytail, the bobbles which swing from the top of her boots, she is a limp Medusa of the morning - all sleepy limbs, swaying extensions and and yawning.

Nodding along with the music in her ears which leaks out occasionally in silver-cymballed beads and the chirrups of tree-frogs, she skillfully applies first concealer, then foundation, to smooth her half-woken skin, dull the bright spots of chilled flush on her cheeks, cover the shadows under her eyes.

She is tired, and this morning ritual is performed in private, inside the walls of her attention, the train a public extension of her bathroom.

Eyeliner, shadow, highlighter to brow and socket and the sides of her nose. Liptint, applied with a stained brush the colour of frosted Ribena. Mascara, poked and stroked onto lashes framing eyes which peer into a hand-held mirror, while her mouth makes an unconscious ‘o’. Then blush, which lifts her color, brings her to cheeks back to life in the cold morning. Finally, attaching to ears multiple strands of silver, which brush her collar and tangle with her hair, and a rummage in the bag of tricks to find the secret ingredient, a breath mint.

As the train rumbles through the city, she becomes human, and when the next stop comes, she rises and leaves the train, coloured ribbons and scarves and extensions flying, alive, awake and ready.

Oldish woman wearing a red coat, to another, with bulging handbag: ‘Scuse me…I think I recognise you from somewhere. Can’t think where, though….

Other woman: [smiles] Off the telly? Maybe?

First woman: [cocks head on one side and pauses] No, that’s not it…

Second woman: I’m an Actor? In, um, Eastenders? [smiles at the other people in the bus stop, as if to indicate that this happens all the time]

First woman: [studies the other woman for another moment] OH! I know! You look like that woman in the lamp shop down the road!

Second woman: [looks confused] …

First woman: [reassuringly, smiling] …it’s the hair.

Second woman: [reaches a hand up to touch her hair]

[the bus arrives]

*NB The photos above aren’t connected with this story, apart from being taken at bus stops.

She’s got new shoes. At the end of long, bare and goose-pimpled legs, they are conspicuously shiny and uncomfortable, and she does not know what to do with them.

They are tucked together primly, her knees higher than she is used to.

They are stretched out in front, swaying on the points of the heels.

They are pigeon-positioned, with her tote bag between ankles.

Her toes wiggle in their unfamiliar confines, and she finds herself sneaking glances at these new additions, admiringly, just as other commuters do the same to her.

Trotters stuffed in phat-laced white adidas, with jeans suitably distressed and earnest meeja glasses. He’s reading a limited-print-run magazine - the kind with incredibly stylised fashion photography and wrapped in an achingly ironic cover - a gorgeous woman in a pig mask - with a single-syllable name.

Munt. Vibe. Tramp. Shunt. Meh.

He is flipping through the pages, impatiently, and his lips move as his piggy eyes flick across the pages.

She can’t stop fidgeting. First she’s opening a bank statement, then rearranging the contents of her handbag, then rummaging in her coat pocket to change the track on her music player, then faffing with tucking her hair behind her ears.

With every twitch, her downy jacket, which adds an inch to her personal space, or takes one off, intrudes upon the suited man beside her. With every brush of her puffa, he huffs a little louder, and rearranges himself to withdraw from her contact.

His annoyance increases at precisely the same rate as her awareness doesn’t.

1. Clipping your nails (biting is just about bearable, but any activity which results in bits which were previously attached to your body suddenly arcing through the air towards me is a no-no)
2. Picking your nose (especially if you subsequently eat/flick/wipe your boogers - see (1), above)
3. Scratching your noggin (most especially when it causes a scurfy blizzard to erupt, which then settles in drifts on my clothing and alights on my nose and eyelashes)
4. Picking your feet (including and especially if they’re on the seat next to you and/or you’re wearing flip-flops. There is never a right time to debride yourself in public.)
5. Scratching your bollocks (sorry, “jiggling your keys.” Yeah, right. I’m not fooled)
6. Chewing gum.

In fact, stop: Hammertime.

Let’s examine that one in more detail: since we must endure you chewing like a cow on the cud, it seems reasonable that I should be crystal-clear about what exactly I neither need or want to experience:

I don’t want to see your slack-jawed, open mouthed chewing, as the gum washing-machines around your mouth. If I wanted to see the inside of people’s mouths, I’d have become a dentist.

I don’t want to hear the sound of your eternal, infernal (etfernal?) mastication - the rhythmic, smacking chlump, chlump, chlump of pre-swallowed wetness. Like apples, but neverending.

I don’t want to see you sneakily trying to secrete your spent and shapeless grey lump of taste-empty chud somewhere around you when you’re done you’ve finished your odious chomping. Don’t stick it under a seat, on a wall or between the seat cushions. Hiding something is not the same as throwing it away - and here’s another newsflash: throwing it away from you is not the same as throwing it away. It’s rubbish. It goes in a bin.

If you must chew, wrap it in something when removed from your gob and throw it the fuck away when you find a fucking bin, you asshat.

And most of all, I don’t want to suddenly find my sole tackily dragging something from its footfall, or my bum strangely adhered to the bus seat, like I did earlier on my way home. If you chew gum and then leave it where other people can sit in it, you’re an inconsiderate, hurf-swizzling minch-smuggler and I will hunt you down and hurt you.

And then make you pay for a new pair of jeans.

So, I didn’t really get podcasts when they first became popular a few years back. This is probably mostly to do with the fact that, since my commute was a) above ground and b) short, I was more than happy to just listen to the radio on the way to and from work, which seemed to coincide perfectly with BBC Radio Four’s morning slot (9am - things like Andrew Marr’s Start the Week plus The Long View, Midweek, Desert Island Discs and Thursday’s Boffinmungous (oh, alright, In Our Time, presented by Melvyn Bragg, and then on the way home at about 6.30, the comedy slot.)

Since starting my new commute, back in April, I have experimented with reading (books, not shit free newspapers), listening to music (I found KD Lang’s Hymns from the 49th Parallel to be particularly soothing as I got to grips with being trapped in a sardine tin), watching things (Seasons 1-6 of Seinfeld and the first couple of seasons of Futurama) and finally, listening to the odd podcast.

And, you know, I’m a convert. I’ve found some which are absolutely fabulous for the commute - about an hour long, and by turns intelligent, interesting, entertaining and engrossing. In fact, I find myself frequently transported out of the tube carriage and to another place, the place where my attention is when I’m watching a film or on the phone - it’s not here where my body is, but it’s not anywhere else, so where is it? - and on at least one occasion have overshot my stop through being so rapt.

So for the sake of reference, I thought I’d share a rundown of what’s on my subscription list at the moment (with asteriskification denoting the ones I ALWAYS make a point of listening to)…

Magazine

• Start the Week
• Midweek
• Excess Baggage
• Resonance FM

Documentaries & Features

• TEDTalks
• Theory of Everything
• Thinking Allowed
• WNYC’s RadioLab*
• This American Life
• alt.NPR B-Side Radio
• Re:Sound*
• Third Coast Featurecast
• World Service Documentary Archive
• From Our Own Correspondent

Music

• Sunday Best
• Take Your Medicine*
• JustLikePodcast*

Now, obviously, I don’t listen to all of these every time there’s a new episode - but it is remarkably easy to plough through them, especially since I spend a minimum of 2.5 hours in transit each day.

I’d love to hear if you have any recommended podcasts. Stick your suggestions in the comments…

Following on from my earlier ruminations about commuter seating preferences on the tube, I thought it was about time that I jotted down another thing I’ve noticed in the process of travelling across London every day (and back) during the peak busy periods.

We all know that tubes are crowded during rush hour. Space is a commodity, and it’s hard fought for, clung to, and bitterly conceded. But what’s interesting is the inventive ways that people find to create or compensate for a lack of space.

When seated, there are three main methods for preserving personal space:

1. Putting things on the seat beside you (if there is one) to keep it empty for as long as possible.

   Things can include:

   • Shopping bags
   • Briefcases or other bags
   • Piles of free newspapers
   • Rubbish including bottles, cans, apple cores, banana skins and crisp packets
   • Your feet
   • Other bits of your anatomy

   All of these things are designed to dissuade potential sitters from taking up occupation via the simple method of assuming (quite rightly, in many cases) that the typical reserved British commuter would instinctively shy away from the social awkwardness of asking someone to make room. This is focused on the concern that, in many ways, this action is tantamount to saying “I really want to sit next to you”, whereas it actually means “look, I really want to sit down, and unfortunately, that means next to you.”

I did hear someone say the other day (on QI, I think - it might have been Phil Jupitus) that the best way to prevent someone from sitting next to you was to leave the seat empty and, when you see someone making a beeline for it, make eye contact, smile in a slightly mad way and pat the empty seat in an inviting manner. People will suddenly, strangely be fine standing.

2. Spreading out - occupying as much space as possible by using your limbs in a strategic fashion.

   There are two main methods here:

   • Elbows. Thanks to the advent of the free sociopathic freesheet, this tactic has become a breeze. The paper extended to full stretch occupies a greater width than the average human bottom, so while your rear may be confined to a single seat, your arms and elbows, at an obtuse angle, can reclaim space above the waist, which in turn prevents your neighbour from being able to impinge on your personal comfort zone.
   • Legs. This is much easier to achieve for men than women, for reasons which will quickly become apparent.

     Gentlemen, I understand that you have ENORMOUS genitalia. I further understand that because of this it must be difficult to walk, let alone sit. This must be why, when you get on the tube in your Hugo Boss suit, and claim a seat, you feel the need to open your legs so wide that your seat-mate is reduced to a prim, squished perch.

     Let’s examine the evidence:

Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies for the crapness of this camphone photo, but crossing the road to the bus stop this morning I was struck by how perfectly all the commuters in the line were preserving their personal space. Lovely.

I’ve written about queuing here before, notably:

• The Fine Art of Queuing - in which I attempt to buy a sieve in a backstreet Bolivian hardware store
• The Revolting Queue - in which the locals turn nasty when someone cuts in
• In the Queue - in which I’m accosted by an oddball

…and others, I’m sure.

H2G2 has a nice breakdown of queue typology here. And I liked this invention by a West Bank woman of special socks for queuing in:

Maram Abdel Latif, from Jenin, spent three years on the design and produced her first prototype in February.

The socks are made from nylon and gel that moulds around wearers’ feet to prevent discomfort, even if they stand for hours, as they sometimes have to.

Ms Latif, 22, says the socks are ideal for pregnant women and the elderly.

The carer at an elderly home says she got the idea after facing long waits at Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank.

For years (five at least) I had a relatively straightforward (mostly) 20 minute bus hop from home (in Mortlake, SW14) to work (in Olympia, W14).

Five minutes walk to the bus stop. A couple of minutes of waiting, then 20 minutes on a shuttle bus through Barnes, up Castlenau (thank heavens for the bus lane - I’ve never figured out why all those single car drivers (that’s solo, not unattached, I assume) bothered sitting in that interminable traffic jam every morning when the bus lane alongside proved the effectiveness of public transport, at least for that stretch), over Hammersmith Bridge and then 10 minutes walk from the bus depot and I was at my desk. And on the way home, the same in reverse (except without the bus lane, dangnabit) or in good weather a 40 minute saunter down the towpath.

Lovely.

Before we moved to SW14, my commute was an 8 minute walk. Before that, it was an overland train (the North London Line AKA the Crack Line) from Wet Hamster round to Olympia via Willesden Arsehole Junction. Before that, half an hour on a bus from Maida Vale to Chelsea.

In other words, pretty cushy and relatively stressless, and all above ground.

Until, that is, I started my new job last month. Nowadays, I have the same short and joyful bus ride, topped off by a minimum of forty minutes on the tube, and then another ten minute walk.

Let me tell you, it’s been an eye-opener, and after a month, I’ve come to some conclusions. None particularly earth-shattering, and all old news to you seasoned commuters, I’ll warrant, but quite revelatory to me. I’ve been jotting things down on my extra 2 hours travel a day, and will be sharing them here as time permits. Bet you can’t wait, can you?

Anyway, without further ado:

1. There’s a definite hierarchy to tube seats.

The thing about buses is that they’re usually relatively short hops. You know that it’ll be over pretty soon, which means that standing up for a short while isn’t a great hardship. Bus passengers take sitting down for granted.

Not so on the underground. On the tube, you’re in it for the long-haul. Seats are hard-won and bitterly defended which means selective eyesight when old/pregnant people get on, and a competitive pounce when a spot becomes vacant. Which brings me to the realisation that not all spaces are equal.

This is something which isn’t immediately apparent to the casual tube user, but which quickly reveals itself to the hardened commuter. Everyone knows the prime seats and standing spots, and people jostle for supremacy when the doors open, especially at the depot, when the train is empty.

In the reference diagram below, the preferred pecking order of one end of a Hammersmith & City line carriage is dissected:

Read the rest of this entry »

(Overheard on the bus at midnight. Two men, both slurring, slumped on the back seat and reeking of an evening of liquid exuberance.)

“What did you think about tonight, mate? Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah.”

“I dunno what you reckon, but I reckon that the…the life force has gone out of ‘ammersmiff these days”

“Yeah.”

“It’s so important for a place to have a life force, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Hammersmith used to have loads of it, but these days…well, I dunno, it’s just gone, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe next time we could go on a train down to Clapham, there are loads of pubs - great pubs, they’ve got so much life force, mate, it’s untrue! What do you reckon, should we do that sometime?”

“Yeah.”

“I tell you what, how about this, why don’t we go out tomorrow night, I’ll drive - I won’t drink any more than a couple of shandies - anywhere you like in London, anywhere at all. What do you think? Fancy it?”

“Yeah.”

“The most important thing in the world is life force. You have to be places with good life force, you have to find them”

“Yeah.”

“Otherwise you’re nuffink.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll find somewhere with life force, mate, I promise. We’ll find it.”

“Yeah.”

The area of London where I live is pretty much the only place in this city where I still see people queueing for the bus. To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I like living there. I want to live somewhere where people are courteous and considerate. In fact, I want to live in 1930s small-town England, but that’s another story.

The other morning, I witnessed near anarchy on the rivertide-lapped streets of south-west London, as the beautiful natural orderliness of things was disturbed by the actions of An Outsider.

Burn him! Burn him!

When I got to the bus stop, there were four people waiting there already, so I joined the end of the line. Number five. The queueing system is always the same - people stand in single file along the slim pavement, snaking away from the bus stop, and facing the oncoming traffic. As more people show up, the line gets longer and longer, because that’s what lines do, and that’s what we nice people of Britain do, we queue, and by God it is sacred to us, so do not mess.

By the time fifteen minutes had passed, there was no bus - probably as a result of crap traffic and weather combined - and 23 people in the queue. We stood. We shifted. We peered hopefully at the bend in the road. We checked our watches. Nothing. No bus.

And then, sauntering up the road, his black and white stripy hat pulled low over his brow, a slight man approached the head of the queue. He studied the timetable for a nanosecond, and then stepped back and stopped, leaning against the wall, his hands thrust deep in winter pockets.

A quiet murmur of snorts and derisory grunts emitted involuntarily from the queue. Rhubarb rhubarb. Who’s this? What’s he doing? Doesn’t he know there’s a queue? Is he? He can’t be, can he? These are the rules. This is what we do. Doesn’t he know? Can’t he see? Doesn’t he CARE? Incredible! Inconceivable!

The linemembers glanced at each other in silent and growing disgust and incredulity. The audacity! The sheer affrontery! The gall!

Who will say something? The people at the back craned out of the line towards those at the front, urging them into action with eyebrows and glares, silently. The people at the front twirled their necks around towards those in the middle and the back, who’d have the most to lose from someone pushing in.

Not a word was spoken. The whole line had become electric with unspoken urgency, but still no-one said a thing.

Then suddenly, in the distance, the red hulk of the bus hove into view.

Muscles tightened along the line, and it was clear that individuals were plotting how to ensure that this…this IMPOSTER, this INTERLOPER didn’t succeed in jumping the queue: Oh, you can wait at the front, sonny-Jim, but you’re not going to get on before me, you mark my words. Shoulders and elbows and briefcases were aligned and primed in readiness for the Barnes-Barge-and-Body-Block: a prim and oh-so-polite manoevre which efficiently prevents access to the offending party by inserting one’s own body - and associated accessories - in their path. Often seen employed at the bar in the Sun Inn by rugby types.

But - oh, the humanity - when the doors opened, young stripy hatted man nimbly hopped on before anyone could blink or barge, and tripped lightly to the back seat, where he endured, unaware, the wrath of two dozen pissed-off commuters glaring at him as they boarded.

And so the journey passed. We commuters, stuffed into the bus like sand between the toes of a big red giant, steaming quietly, rolled eyes at each other as we rolled over the bridge towards work.

Meanwhile, in the row behind me, the urgent schtomp schtomp schtomp of the skinny guy’s music through tinny earbuds sounded like the jangling of so many keys.