Ninepence ha'penny
Night journey home
I was in a large travelling dormitory attached to a train. Most of the other travellers were absent, probably in the buffet car. So I wandered up to this woman's bed and borrowed her book. It was called "Stockbroker Racing" and was about stockbroker racing at weekends. I returned to my bed, settled down and started reading. The book was OK and had a lot of pictures in it of lean stockbrokers in kennels but wasn't anything that special. So I returned it and picked up another book from this absent woman's bedside collection. This one had a bookmark in it about half way through. I opened it and found it was set in epic Roman times. All the main characters had the same Christian name, 'Tis: for example, 'Tis Brown, 'Tis Smith, 'Tis Blair, etc. This made reading the dialogues a bit difficult:
"Who goes there?" roared 'Tis.
'''Tis," shot back 'Tis.
"'Tis who?" bellowed 'Tis.
"There are two parthenons and an eleven-hundredths symbol inscribed on your watch," evinced 'Tis.
"That'll do nicely," adumbrated 'Tis.
"I require a hotch-potch of ancient Roman comestibles to appease my barbarous German hunger" chimed in 'Tis.
"What?" barked 'Tis Suspiciously, steaming the lentils.
As I carried on reading I started to think "this is a really good book. It has everything. It's hysterical, it's historical, it has people who use laptops, and it even has a secondary character called (not 'Tis, but) Leticious. I wish I had written this book". Then I woke up. Even after waking up I was still jealous of the writer of this book, before gradually realising that if I had dreamed the book it didn't therefore actually exist yet, so I could actually write it and lay claim to it as my own. This seemed a bit of a low-down trick at first. So I wandered off to the train buffet to wrestle over the morality of it.
But not before hopping out of the bunk and landing on the wrong foot.
Part of the bar was being hogged by a big roly-poly young man who was doing something odd with two music manuscript books. He would look at the music written in the first one, then take a sip of coffee, appear to be thinking hard for about five minutes, then write a note in the second book. The barmaid was wearing one of those skirts. She also had impossibly pale blue eyes: I waited till she was side on and checked for contact lenses, but couldn't see any so I suppose you can actually have eyes like that. They are perfect eyes for a train cafeteria barmaid as even when they are looking at you they appear to be looking in the opposite direction.
After a coffee, a sandwich, a bottle of wine and a beer, I went back to my compartment. One of the blokes occupying another litera was snoring. For some reason I remembered how in NLP they say that if you mimic another person's body language and idiolect you can create a good impression, and idly wondered if I could make this bloke feel a profound admiration for me (when he woke up, or perhaps even before) by copying his snoring. It wouldn't have been difficult. But I didn't want to be admired, I just wanted my left leg to be about a foot shorter. It gets tiresome trying to look out of the window from the head of the bed when every single view contains the silhouette of a foot in plaster as its chief feature.
Not that there was all that much to see. It was too dark mostly.
Postscript: if you are travelling with two aluminium crutches, a heavy leather suitcase, a guitar embraced by a towel in one of those naff kumbaya-type fake tartan cases, and a jacket which it's far too hot to wear, then when stepping on an escalator do NOT place the heavy leather suitcase two steps in front of you. If you do, the following will happen:
When you get near the top of the escalator, you start to wonder whether the suitcase will just slide neatly off at the top. You start to hope that it will. When it gets to the top and doesn't slide off, but instead just sits and surfs the steps, you try to push it forwards with an aluminium crutch. When it refuses to move forwards, you have time to think: "I wish this suitcase wasn't in front of me. I wish I wasn't about to fall over." Then the escalator will gently push your feet under the suitcase. An aluminium crutch will fly into the air, describing an impressive parabola, while you are tipped over into a horizontal position. The guitar will hit something hard and then fall underneath you. After that a Moroccan will pìck up your crutch, come up to you and offer to help. I've noticed that about Moroccans - they always offer to help. I wonder if it's a religious thing.
Post-postscript: I am now listening to a song by Peruvian singer Carmencita Lara called "Cemetery, cemetery, give me back my mother". It's much better than Simon and Garfunkel. There is a line in it about "blancas azucenas". Azucena can be a girl's name. It sounds nice doesn't it? Sort of like a mixture of Cena (supper) and Azúcar (sugar). MY BAG OF SUGAR IS CRAWLING WITH ANTS. According to the dictionary Azucena means "Madonna lily, Annunciation lily". What's one of those when it's at home? When I'm at home I check things in dictionaries. Fibula.
(24 June 2002)
I was in a large travelling dormitory attached to a train. Most of the other travellers were absent, probably in the buffet car. So I wandered up to this woman's bed and borrowed her book. It was called "Stockbroker Racing" and was about stockbroker racing at weekends. I returned to my bed, settled down and started reading. The book was OK and had a lot of pictures in it of lean stockbrokers in kennels but wasn't anything that special. So I returned it and picked up another book from this absent woman's bedside collection. This one had a bookmark in it about half way through. I opened it and found it was set in epic Roman times. All the main characters had the same Christian name, 'Tis: for example, 'Tis Brown, 'Tis Smith, 'Tis Blair, etc. This made reading the dialogues a bit difficult:
"Who goes there?" roared 'Tis.
'''Tis," shot back 'Tis.
"'Tis who?" bellowed 'Tis.
"There are two parthenons and an eleven-hundredths symbol inscribed on your watch," evinced 'Tis.
"That'll do nicely," adumbrated 'Tis.
"I require a hotch-potch of ancient Roman comestibles to appease my barbarous German hunger" chimed in 'Tis.
"What?" barked 'Tis Suspiciously, steaming the lentils.
As I carried on reading I started to think "this is a really good book. It has everything. It's hysterical, it's historical, it has people who use laptops, and it even has a secondary character called (not 'Tis, but) Leticious. I wish I had written this book". Then I woke up. Even after waking up I was still jealous of the writer of this book, before gradually realising that if I had dreamed the book it didn't therefore actually exist yet, so I could actually write it and lay claim to it as my own. This seemed a bit of a low-down trick at first. So I wandered off to the train buffet to wrestle over the morality of it.
But not before hopping out of the bunk and landing on the wrong foot.
Part of the bar was being hogged by a big roly-poly young man who was doing something odd with two music manuscript books. He would look at the music written in the first one, then take a sip of coffee, appear to be thinking hard for about five minutes, then write a note in the second book. The barmaid was wearing one of those skirts. She also had impossibly pale blue eyes: I waited till she was side on and checked for contact lenses, but couldn't see any so I suppose you can actually have eyes like that. They are perfect eyes for a train cafeteria barmaid as even when they are looking at you they appear to be looking in the opposite direction.
After a coffee, a sandwich, a bottle of wine and a beer, I went back to my compartment. One of the blokes occupying another litera was snoring. For some reason I remembered how in NLP they say that if you mimic another person's body language and idiolect you can create a good impression, and idly wondered if I could make this bloke feel a profound admiration for me (when he woke up, or perhaps even before) by copying his snoring. It wouldn't have been difficult. But I didn't want to be admired, I just wanted my left leg to be about a foot shorter. It gets tiresome trying to look out of the window from the head of the bed when every single view contains the silhouette of a foot in plaster as its chief feature.
Not that there was all that much to see. It was too dark mostly.
Postscript: if you are travelling with two aluminium crutches, a heavy leather suitcase, a guitar embraced by a towel in one of those naff kumbaya-type fake tartan cases, and a jacket which it's far too hot to wear, then when stepping on an escalator do NOT place the heavy leather suitcase two steps in front of you. If you do, the following will happen:
When you get near the top of the escalator, you start to wonder whether the suitcase will just slide neatly off at the top. You start to hope that it will. When it gets to the top and doesn't slide off, but instead just sits and surfs the steps, you try to push it forwards with an aluminium crutch. When it refuses to move forwards, you have time to think: "I wish this suitcase wasn't in front of me. I wish I wasn't about to fall over." Then the escalator will gently push your feet under the suitcase. An aluminium crutch will fly into the air, describing an impressive parabola, while you are tipped over into a horizontal position. The guitar will hit something hard and then fall underneath you. After that a Moroccan will pìck up your crutch, come up to you and offer to help. I've noticed that about Moroccans - they always offer to help. I wonder if it's a religious thing.
Post-postscript: I am now listening to a song by Peruvian singer Carmencita Lara called "Cemetery, cemetery, give me back my mother". It's much better than Simon and Garfunkel. There is a line in it about "blancas azucenas". Azucena can be a girl's name. It sounds nice doesn't it? Sort of like a mixture of Cena (supper) and Azúcar (sugar). MY BAG OF SUGAR IS CRAWLING WITH ANTS. According to the dictionary Azucena means "Madonna lily, Annunciation lily". What's one of those when it's at home? When I'm at home I check things in dictionaries. Fibula.
(24 June 2002)
El marroquí te ha de haber querido robar, pendejo, pero no vio nada que valiese la pena y te vio más pobre que él mismo.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PYWYC3vk6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUdj-vR2wnk
"I wonder if it's a religious thing"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEy69_qVarI
Eres un estúpido ignorante.
What up, body?
ReplyDeleteAre you ok?
You're gifted, don't stop sharing it with us, please.