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Oct. 18th, 2004
They're not sending me abroad nearly enough, I'm feeling stale. The other day I went to a town out in the commuter belt, the Home Counties. On the way down I thought I saw a young deer, though it looked perhaps too stocky. There was a meeting that lasted until gone nine. I bailed out at ten-to, because if I'm going to be in a meeting that late there had better be dancing squirrels. And there were none.
I walked through the little town to the station and it was so thoroughly deserted that I was looking out for military vehicles - for that level of depopulation it has to be martial law, a curfew, right? I'd forgotten how a centre of population can empty like a sink once the shops close. It would be histrionic to compare the place to death, but there wasn't much life.
From the near-empty train towards London I could see those coming the other way, the ragged end of the rush hour. Lit up in the carriages were people who looked exhausted, defeated, but indifferent. I say that, but I'm sure that was just my interpretation applied to them. Perhaps they had joy in their hearts - after all, I look miserable even when I'm happy. No-one owes the world a smile.
Once on the tube I was glad to see humanity regain its strength in numbers, the swaggering yelling drunks, the mobs of disorientated tourists, the lot.
Yesterday I took the District shuttle from High Street Ken to Olympia (Olympia is a big exhibition space, like the Javits Center in New York, or the Parc des Expositions at the Porte de Versailles, or the RAI at Amsterdam Zuid) . As ever, deserted 'til Earl's Court, but this time mobbed from there onwards. I covertly observed the new occupants of the carriage, trying to work out what they were going to from their collective profile. I wasn't having much luck. I wondered if the Ideal Home was still on, but they seemed a little too young. Early twenties to mid thirties. No mewling spawn in attendance, and the couples weren't bickering either. So, not some interiors festival. And yet they were sufficiently bland. Now, I'm bland, but they were a particular type of bland. This won't mean much to most readers, but they were Fulham and Putney bland. The fellows looked as though they'd enjoy watching a good game of Buggery Union, the lasses may well have worked in publishing and be professionally responsible for the effluent issue of books with Jordi Labanda cartoons of handbags and shoes on the cover (me? bitchy? like what I was talking about yesterday? hypocrite? Naaah).
When I got off the train it all became clear and I was kicking myself because it was too, too obvious. The Daily Mail Ski and Snowboard Exhibition. As if it could have been anything else.
Perhaps I'm developing a brain tumour. Everyone should have an ambition and mine is aneurism by the time I'm forty. Earlier I was getting strong smells in connection with nothing I can identify. In Church Street, candle smoke, followed by fish (prawns, I think). Then crossing the Park, hundreds of yards (miles?) from the nearest greasy spoon, sausages and the tomato ketchup to go with them.
I walked through the little town to the station and it was so thoroughly deserted that I was looking out for military vehicles - for that level of depopulation it has to be martial law, a curfew, right? I'd forgotten how a centre of population can empty like a sink once the shops close. It would be histrionic to compare the place to death, but there wasn't much life.
From the near-empty train towards London I could see those coming the other way, the ragged end of the rush hour. Lit up in the carriages were people who looked exhausted, defeated, but indifferent. I say that, but I'm sure that was just my interpretation applied to them. Perhaps they had joy in their hearts - after all, I look miserable even when I'm happy. No-one owes the world a smile.
Once on the tube I was glad to see humanity regain its strength in numbers, the swaggering yelling drunks, the mobs of disorientated tourists, the lot.
Yesterday I took the District shuttle from High Street Ken to Olympia (Olympia is a big exhibition space, like the Javits Center in New York, or the Parc des Expositions at the Porte de Versailles, or the RAI at Amsterdam Zuid) . As ever, deserted 'til Earl's Court, but this time mobbed from there onwards. I covertly observed the new occupants of the carriage, trying to work out what they were going to from their collective profile. I wasn't having much luck. I wondered if the Ideal Home was still on, but they seemed a little too young. Early twenties to mid thirties. No mewling spawn in attendance, and the couples weren't bickering either. So, not some interiors festival. And yet they were sufficiently bland. Now, I'm bland, but they were a particular type of bland. This won't mean much to most readers, but they were Fulham and Putney bland. The fellows looked as though they'd enjoy watching a good game of Buggery Union, the lasses may well have worked in publishing and be professionally responsible for the effluent issue of books with Jordi Labanda cartoons of handbags and shoes on the cover (me? bitchy? like what I was talking about yesterday? hypocrite? Naaah).
When I got off the train it all became clear and I was kicking myself because it was too, too obvious. The Daily Mail Ski and Snowboard Exhibition. As if it could have been anything else.
Perhaps I'm developing a brain tumour. Everyone should have an ambition and mine is aneurism by the time I'm forty. Earlier I was getting strong smells in connection with nothing I can identify. In Church Street, candle smoke, followed by fish (prawns, I think). Then crossing the Park, hundreds of yards (miles?) from the nearest greasy spoon, sausages and the tomato ketchup to go with them.
