Flakes On A Train

Sometimes, on a train, I see something that makes me think “N’aww. We’re all just in this together, huh?” Like when a girl was having a tearful barney with her boyfriend over the phone and a man walked past and gave her a fun-sized Milky Way.

At other times, on a train, I see something that makes me want to raise both hands up, surrender style, and say ‘You know what, I’m out -  I am DONE with people’.

This is about that second thing.

I get the same train to work nearly every day and on that train with me are other people who get that same train to work every day. My feelings towards most of the people on the train are on the pleasant side of indifference, but there are a few that would burn at the stake. A couple weeks ago, I added two more people to that list.

I was two stops into the journey and although I couldn’t see the doors, I knew that a ‘character’ had gotten on the train. The complete mentalists who like to stand beside the doors for the entire forty minute journey despite there being ample seating when they first board the train all began to shuffle around uncomfortably. One lady even walked down the aisle into the next carriage. I craned my neck and saw what all the fuss was about.

I saw a man wearing a Hard Rock Café T-shirt that had been through the wash too many times and a pair of bobbly jogging bottoms. He was carrying a carrier bag full of carrier bags and had those headphones with the foam on them over his ears. He was singing loudly and unintelligibly, despite the end of the headphones – the little plug in bit  (look, I don’t know all of the headphone terms, ok?) hanging freely by his stomach, not plugged in to anything. Not even a personal cassette player.

The atmosphere in the carriage tightened somewhat  - “Uh oh, we’ve got ourselves a real live crazy person here, guys’.

He made his way down the aisle to a seat that was a few in front of me. He didn’t smell great and everyone noticed, trying to find a way to make sitting with their hand over their nose and mouth look completely natural, whilst he clutched onto his train ticket with both hands and carried on singing.

On the seats directly across the aisle from him , pretty much next to him but for one a half feet of space, were two women. Office women. I mean, I know that most of us work in an office, but these were real office women. By that, I mean that they definitely work in the same office, have definitely bought the 5:2 diet book after Philip Schofield recommended it and they definitely both have a glasses case that looks like a little handbag, which they bought because they thought it was cute.
Woman A, let’s call her Julie, looked at Woman B, let’s call her Nicola (although, Julie probably calls her Nic) and wrinkled her nose whilst turning the corners of her mouth down. She grimaced. Julie did a grimace about that man who had just got on the train.
Nicola did a fake heave in response. A very loud fake heave.

The man in the Hard Rock Café t-shirt carried on singing and Julie and Nicola carried on giggling and smirking between themselves. After a while he looked right at them and stopped singing for a while after that.

I sat there watching with a lump in my throat – partly with anger and partly because the whole thing made me feel so sad that I felt like I might break down into that gasping kind of crying.

If you get trains regularly, you’ll have encountered a crazy person or two. Sometimes, they’ll be the sing/talk to themselves crazy. Maybe they’ll be the sing/talk to everyone else kind of crazy. Maybe they just look dazed or shakey. More often than not they will smell, and at least two people in the carriage will pull a disgusted face – possibly because they want to be clear to everyone that the smell is not coming from them and possibly because they are an immature, uncompassionate moron.

The smells make me sad. They remind me that most of these people are alone and if there is one thing that is guaranteed to make me feel weepy (putting aside the 71902 other things that make me weepy) it’s the idea of people being alone.
When I was crazy for while, I had people around me to care for me. They made sure that I didn’t go outside smelling like damp washing and that my hair still looked clean and shiny and thank god they did, because at that point in time, I cared about nothing apart from lying in bed, trying to sleep so that my life would go by quicker.

It makes my heart crack a little to think that the reason the man in the Hard Rock Café t-shirt’s clothes are all bobbly and a bit out of shape, or that he doesn’t smell as fresh as perhaps he could is because he doesn’t have anyone to help him - bar the person who’s paid to pop in for twenty minutes twice a week to check that he’s a) not dead and b) not harboring his neighbor’s dead body in the bath.

I realize that I sound like a sanctimonious shitbag. I’m not saying all of this because I’m a nice person. I’ve turned the volume up a notch to drown out with unsettling whispering of the person sitting opposite me, or have pulled my scarf up higher to cover my nose and mouth in an attempt to not smell that smell. Sometimes, I’ve even got up and moved carriages because someone’s ill brain has made me feel so uncomfortable – so yeah, I’m not exactly one of the good guys here.

However, there are plenty of things that I find more offensive on trains than someone who is mentally ill and hasn’t showered that day. Keypad tones are one thing, for a start. Listening to two men talk to their friend about his “fat mess” of a girlfriend (“I remember when you brought her to the pub and I thought ‘fucking hell, mate.”) is another., as well as other people’s breath and the man who I once saw cut his fingernails on the tube – those are some other things that offend me much, much more than someone who is, essentially, ill.

I tried to imagine what it must feel like, to be that man in the Hard Rock Café t-shirt. I came up with this - You know that horrible feeling you get when you feel like strangers are staring at you. You can maybe even see two friends exchange a look or a whisper about you. It could be because of that shirt that you bought ‘for a change’ or the trousers that you picked up because you were tired of always wearing dark colours. Maybe it’s because of the instant tan that you slapped on this morning because you couldn’t face wearing jeans.

I think it would be like that, but ten times worse, because you get it all the time. People look at you weird all of the time, or won’t sit by you ever or it goes really quiet around you pretty much always and you don’t know why.

Or, you do know why and you’re trying your very best to stop it.

“I shall have the fish sticks, please. And a Jaeger Bomb” – What to order on a date

You’re on a date and you’re about to eat. There is going to be some food soon. You’ve stared at the menu blindly for three minutes, having momentarily lost the ability to read and now you’ve actually got to knuckle down and decide what to order.

Well, before you make a rash decision and order something delicious, something that you actually decided on six hours earlier when you browsed the menu online at work, make sure that Future You thinks back to Present You, or Past You (whatever, I’m not a scientist), reading this, in order to ensure that some of this information informs your decision.

I, personally, wish that I’d read something this helpful when I went on a date a while back (seriously, a while. Really a while. A why-yul.). I ordered crispy pork belly, like a fucking mug. Whilst I was cutting into my food I noticed that my date had gone a bit quiet and wasn’t really looking at me properly; I put it down to the food – I mean, I’m generally much more interested in food than I am in people. However, things continued to be a little awkward, so I asked whether he was alright.
“I, er, I find it a bit weird that you ordered pork belly. I just, er, I didn’t think you would,” he said.
“…Weird? …Are you a vegetarian?”
He was eating a steak.
“No. No. I just… I find it a bit…repulsive? I don’t know if that’s the right word. Maybe not. Just a bit…much?”
“Oh. Oh, right.”

If I’d have known that there was a whole thing about what you should and shouldn’t order on dates, then I could still be with that guy. If only I’d ordered a quinoa salad, or a pot of Activia or nibbled on fucking cake pop then maybe we’d be together right this second – him gearing up to watch the football, me flicking through Company or preparing snacks. We could have been so happy.

As ever, I turned to Google on my train home and asked it about date foods. I found two totally useful and non-conformist-to-gender-stereotypes pieces that really opened my eyes to the do’s and don’ts of eating on dates. The first is for the girls, and it’s by Fox News.

Apparently, steak is sexy, ladies, so if you want to be sexy then order a steak, it’s as simple as that. ‘When a man sees you take control of a steak, it’ll make him think of you taking control in the bedroom later on.”

…Will it?

I’m assuming that, by ‘take control’, they just mean ‘cut’. Is cutting sexy? Maybe it’s the fact that you require special, often wooden handled, tools? I don’t know, but this bit does contain the line ‘don’t swallow a four inch piece of meat’, so make of that what you will.

If Italian food is more your thing then you’re in luck, as that can be sexy too! Fox News suggest that gnocchi is the way to go if you find yourself somewhere with red gingham tablecloths; it’s the ‘secret sauce’ (the menu normally gives that away, though) and ‘silky mozzarella’ (indeed, it’s very hard to hold when you first get it out of the packet, very wet) that does it, apparently. Gnocchi is totally sexy, what’s more sexy than a food that is so rich that it makes you want to lie flat on a cold wooden floor after you’ve eaten four mouthfuls?

Figs are next on the sexy menu and according to Fox News they’re ‘visually erotic’. I mean, I have a perfume with fig in it, so maybe that will do? The Fox guys also go on to say that Adam and Eve actually wore fig leaves to cover themselves in the Bible – “a good conversation filler for an awkward first date silence!” So, if you do order figs, tell the waiter to ensure that the chef SAVES THE LEAVES, as those could come in handy for some sexy role-play later. However, seeing as no where actually serves figs, I would suggest nipping into Tesco Metro on your way home and picking up a pack of fig rolls. They’re nice.

As for the foods that girls should avoid ordering when on a date, the general take home message can be summed up as ‘don’t order foods that will make you shit yourself.’ This apparently includes beans, curry and Jaeger bombs (like they’re a fucking food).
I’m not sure whether the ladies over at Fox News suffer from particularly loose bowels, or they heard a story from a friend about a friend of a friend who had some tummy trouble whilst at Wagamamas, but they’re very keen for you to avoid foods that might cause you to shit yourself, so please bear that in mind when ordering.

And hey, lads, don’t think that you’re able to order what you like on a date either – we’re all in this together. Your guidance comes from AskMen, so rest assured that what follows is top notch stuff.

Ask Men do not think that you should order ‘fish sticks’ on a date. Unless I’m very much mistaken, these are just fish fingers. Now, granted, fish fingers are not the most sophisticated choice to make, especially if you’re perusing the kids menu, but a fish-finger sandwich done right, with good bread and rocket and shit, is phenomenal. Luckily, we live in a time during which the fish-finger sandwich has come back – it’s come back so hard that trendy places that you’d probably go to on a date will serve it, so sod AskMen and get those fish fingers.

According to AskMen, you ‘run the risk of looking like a big girls’ blouse if you can’t crack open the shell of a lobster, therefore you should, under no circumstances, order lobster on a date. ‘How could you be a good provider if you can’t crack open a lobster shell?’ they ask. It’s true, most women fantasise about a topless men, stripped down to their waist, blue jeans low slung on their hips, beads of sweat glistening on their skin as they lift their arms to swing their lobster hammer up over their head and down onto the shell. In fact, I think Diet Coke are using that for their next ad campaign.
I say, order lobster if you want it. Yes, you might look a little flash, but lobster is yum.

Also, provider? Fuck right off, AskMen, fuck right off, now.

Salad is also off the menu for you too guys, I’m afraid. Apparently it ‘says more about you as a man that the fact that your belt doesn’t match your shoes.’
In fact, ordering a salad implies just one thing, and that is ‘that you’re watching your weight and the last thing she needs is another person in her life with a weight issue’ – because the other people in her life are women and women all have weight issues.
You know what I would think if a guy ordered a salad on a date? I would think that it’s June, now, and sometimes when it’s humid you just want a light meal rather than an overcooked chicken breast smothered in bbq sauce. That’s what I would think.

Obviously, it really is just as simple as ordering something that you like. As long as what you’re into isn’t just, like, two dry slices of Hovis or something. Also, stick to what’s on the menu – ordering off the menu and asking the waiter whether the chef “would mind doing an egg-white omelet” makes you seem like a bit of a dick.
If someone is too squeamish or up their own arse to watch you eat anything other than a Jacob’s cracker then this does not bode well for any aspect of your blossoming relationship, whether that’s the sex part of your relationship, the ill part of your relationship or the ‘Can you just look at my back? I think I’ve been bitten by something’ part of your relationship.

Also, I would like it to be noted that ‘pork belly’ does not feature in either of those articles at all. I thought I was safe. I didn’t know.
I didn’t know.

How to swear Letts; A guide for girls.

Upon reading the title of Quentin Letts’ latest article, “Why do female stars swear so much? Pass the carbolic soap”, I promised myself that I wouldn’t write about it. Too easy, I thought. In fact, being too easy, if my foul mouth is anything to go by, is apparently something that the article and I have in common, so that’s kinda neat.

However, seeing as I am without a modicum of self-control – again, something that my constant effing and blinding is testament to according to Quentin, I just couldn’t resist.

Am I going to mock his bitchy opening paragraphs? Am I going to point out the hypocrisy of a man who only gets called on This Morning to go through the day’s papers when hateful-gammon man Kelvin MacKenzie is busy using a few lines in his deliberately provocative article to say that Keira Knightley only swears because she is anxious to be discussed? Am I going to ask Quentin whether he actually wrote the majority of that article ten years ago, as the line “Oh no, Mirren is doing her Vicky Pollard routine again” would lead me to believe?

No. No I am not. Instead, I am going to be helpful.

I for one could really do without Quentin Letts shoving his carbolic soap in my mouth, so I turned to Google (as you can see, I didn’t turn to it for very long) for some pointers on how to stop swearing. Ladies, take note.

1. Swear Jar
Let’s start with the classic – the swear jar. For those who’ve never worked in an office in the early nineties, or don’t possess the shrewd power of deduction afforded to only the very best ITV detectives and can’t crack its enigmatic name, the Swear Jar is a jar that you put money in whenever you swear. The price of a swear word can be up to you (flat rate or sliding scale depending on the severity of the profanity, you can have a lot of fun with this) and there is absolutely no one there to enforce payment, so the whole thing works brilliantly.

Now, I understand that a washed out Marmite pot is not the most aesthetically pleasing item to sit on your desk, so why not make a girls night out of customising your swear jars? I’m seeing Echo Falls, glitter pens, ribbons, zig-zag scissors and a whole lotta fun.

If you do choose this option, depending on how filthy your mouth really is, you can rack up quite a few princess pennies – shoe fund, AMIRIGHT GIRLS?

2. Elastic band
A slightly more controversial method offered up by Wikihow is one in which you wear an elastic band around your wrist and snap it against your skin every time you swear. If 50 Shades of Grey (in fact, given the take-home message of that book and the fact that the film is soon to be released, I’m seeing a BIG merchandise opportunity here) is your bag, then this could prove to be incredibly effective, because, yeah – OUCHIES, but it’s not a particularly chic option, is it?
For the fashion conscious female who’s looking for a more stylish anti-swearing solution then why not try a Pandora bracelet adorned with savagely bejeweled charms?

3. Fill your mouth
If all else fails, keep your mouth busy. If your face hole is full of stuff then you’re not going to be able to speak, let alone swear – unless you’re particularly uncouth, so if you’re feel like you’re about to swear, shove something in your mouth. Suggestions include – macaroons, yoghurts to ease bloating, cake pops and penises.

It’s worth mentioning here that, if you’re reading this in your council house and your response was “You can fuck right off”, then that is fine – Quentin is ok with that. His real issue seems to be that “beautiful blooms” (a phrase that does nothing but make him sound like a serial killer that carves a flower into his victims’ foot, or dries their skin into petals or something) like Dame Helen, Keira Knightley and Kate Winslett are making themselves appear to be working class, or uneducated trollops, as he so eloquently puts it.

So, if you’re less beautiful bloom, and more yellow dandelion then you can swear all you like – Quentin couldn’t give a fuck.

4 Things my dad has taught me since he died

The keyboard sized slabs of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut and novelty golf club covers filling Tesco right now tell me that Father’s Day is approaching. It’s a day that I usually remain fairly indifferent to, but this year I’ve been getting a bit emosh. I haven’t been breaking down in tears every time I’ve come face to face with a pair of novelty cufflinks whilst out shopping, but I’ve felt, for the first time in 9 years, like I’ve wanted to mark the occasion by doing something dad related, so this is it. This is the dad related thing.

In the fourteen years that I had my dad as ‘my dad’ for, he taught me a lot of stuff. Just off the top of my head, he took care of teaching me how to draw people really well, teaching me the lyrics to I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, teaching me how to take the shell off a prawn really, really quickly and, I suppose, teaching me how to walk and talk. But, without sounding like a movie shown on Channel Five at 3pm in the week, he’s taught me a fair amount of stuff since dying too. It’s all stuff that I would have preferred to have learned another way, in an ideal world, but sometimes you’ve just got to deal with what you’re given, haven’t you?

So yeah, here’s the stuff-

1. Awkward social situations are inevitable and fine
A gift given to all people who lose a parent earlier than is expected is the deliciously awkward moment when you have to tell people that you’re actually part of the one-parent club. There is literally no way that you can tell people that your dad is dead without making them feel awkward and, as a result, I am completely comfortable with the awkward silence that follows - just call me The Atmosphere Killer.

I tend to favour a bulldozer approach when the time comes and tend to make people flinch by actually using the word ‘dead’, but I have to. My dad didn’t pass away. ‘Pass away’ implies that he lay in a bed with too many pillows, surrounded by his family, saying inspirational yet funny things. Reality wasn’t like that - one day he was here and then, after a poorly timed chicken bake from the Greggs at the hospital, he was gone. It really was as quick and as brutal as the word ‘dead’.

Prize for the best response to hearing the news goes to the guy who I was on a second date with, who, upon me telling him that my dad died when I was fourteen (I’d like to say here that I generally try to keep the whole ‘dead dad’ thing out of light-hearted, filtered-version-of-who-I-really-am date talk, but sometimes it’s unavoidable, unless for the purpose of the date, I pretend that my dad is alive, which is weird) said “Oh, well at least I don’t have to worry about meeting him!” Now, I know that he was joking - he just wasn’t joking very well.

2. Anything can be funny at any time
I like funny stuff. I like funny people and funny tv shows and funny places – I’m all about funny. However, when someone dies, you accept that for a while ‘funny’ is going on sabbatical from your life and its replacement is a polite, tight smile.

Well, ‘funny’ left my life for about 48 hours.

I don’t know whether it’s because grief exhausts you, and you get a bit delirious, or whether it’s because you’re so relieved to find something funny but the smallest thing can set off the kind of laughing where you actually think that you might be sick as a result. For me, that moment came when my mum, sister and I were shopping for black coats a few days before my dad’s funeral and I found myself stamping my foot in temper in H&M, saying “Mum! I just don’t think this coat looks sad enough.”

I, er, I think you had to be there.

3. Everything will be, mostly, fine
You can be forgiven for thinking that, most of the time, I do not think that things are going to be fine. I cry, really a lot. Old guy in Sainsburys buying a lot of ready meals for one? I’m crying. The stray dog that was running around our street but ran off before anyone could catch it and never got found? Yep, I’m crying. Boy I like doesn’t like me back? I’m crying. I make a relatively minor error at work? I’m crying. Anyone says pretty much anything to me at the wrong end of any given month? You betcha, I’m crying. I’m not afraid to cry, even when I should be. I’ve thought about this a lot and for a while I thought that I was, to use the medical term, completely fucked up, but have since realised that I’m just not bothered about feeling sad, whether it’s for seven minutes or seven months. I’m happy to feel sad, because I know that I won’t feel sad forever.

I can remember the night that my dad died so clearly, which is frustrating because I feel like I remember everything that happened before that less and less every single day, but I remember very clearly that when I lay in bed that night, not able to close my eyes because they felt so sore, that I accepted that I would always feel sad from that day on. Nothing would ever be good or right because my dad wasn’t here, so how could it be? Turns out, that everything does become good and right again and if everything that can be mostly fine after that, then it can always go back to being mostly fine after anything else that happens, can’t it?

PS
Things I forgot to say-
3.5. Always have your picture taken with people, one day you’ll really want those photos.
4. Never cry at school because some kids are saying that your dad “talks funny.” I would love to hear my dad say “batter” instead of “butter” now.