End of the Line

You can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your mobile phone until it happens to you. At first there’s the sinking feeling that it’s not coming back, an anticipatory worry, building like the interference that interrupts a radio signal – pip-piP-pIP-PIP; then the silence, and a brief moment of liberation, when you can just about imagine a world without it; before the ringing sound of panic, blaring in your ear, like an inaudible melody of the names and numbers that you realise you’ve lost for good.

This happened to me yesterday, like some sort of comeuppance for actually engaging in any kind of physical exertion, on a golf course. I guess I swung too hard, and now, only a day later, I’m quickly realising what a handicap it is to be without my phone.

In that time I’ve been unable to cancel a meeting with a mate, respond to the outrageous advances of a lady friend and wish my big sister a Happy Birthday, leaving three people waiting, wondering and wanting to kill me, respectively. Worse still, sitting now on the train, I can’t tell the woman meeting me at the other end that I am more than one hour delayed.

I guess that’s two people wanting to kill me.

What are we complaining about?

1. It being cold in October
2. Kate Moss taking our share of drugs
3. The EU ban on imports of exotic birds. (There goes Christmas)
4. Things not being the way they used to be
5. Lack of British hurricanes

Under the Weather

If only my cleaner had more in common with Gwyneth Paltrow. (Sigh.) I realise how that sounds, but it really is the least of my problems. (For starters, I can’t even park my Hummer in the street and my £50 notes won’t fit in my wallet.)

After walking home in the drizzle (there is no Hummer, but if anybody has any suggestions about the £50s...), I found a note from my new cleaner, Sylvia, whom I’d recently discovered was pleasant but not hot. I always imagined Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan – a weapon of ass distraction. Instead Sylv, although very pleasant, is more of an A bomb. And, it turns out, no Sylvia Plath.

Sam [sic],

Could you get me some more bleach please? And you need washing up liquid. Don’t like this weather.

Sylvia

What’s particularly interesting about this note is not that she spells my name wrong, despite my attempts to print it clearly in all correspondence, but that even in its economy of only five lines we still see a mention of the weather. Are we Brits so obsessed, or rather, so upset by it that it pervades our every conversation, whether spoken or otherwise? The weather constitutes one third of the message body. I didn’t even get a mention when it was obviously my birthday, cake and balloons strewn around the flat. (Maybe that's why.)

Okay, now I’m complaining. But that too – I suppose – is as British as talking of the weather, which brings us back to Gwyneth Paltrow, whom by doing both, last week became 'officially' British. It seems all is not yellow for Mrs Coldplay.

“Bring a raincoat, definitely,” she advises potential ex-pats in the US edition of Marie Claire magazine. “Or at least a little umbrella that can fit in your bag, because it always does rain.”

Even on the off chance that it’s not raining, things, according to Gwyneth, are still rather gloomy, with poor customer service and dirty streets. “My husband thinks I'm way too obsessed with cleanliness and germs. I'm just like, ‘The street is filthy, could we take off our shoes before we come into the house?’”

To be fair, Sylvia says the same. And at least one of the two has no complaints about British men. Gwyneth married Chris Martin in under a year and who knows what the future holds for Sylvia and Sam. At least he takes his shoes off.

Parting Shot

There was an awkwardness with which Peter swept his hair across his brow. Noticing it, I asked, “did you do something different with your hair today, Pete?”
“Yeah, I switched my parting,” he said, once the motion had completed its conspicuous path.
“Can you just…do that?” I asked.
“Well, guys usually have their parting on the left,” he said. “And girls on the right. But I thought I’d switch it up a little.”

My mouth curled into a smile at the thought of Pete, extending the switching up to his dressing habits, turning up at my flat, not as Peter Woods, sports fan and Dylan aficionado, but as Petra, wood strapped firmly to the thigh, bra stuffed with tissue and long black hair, parted from the right.

“Why do we bother with all these gender rules?” he asked, his sensible question interrupting my sordid thought. “Left or right, does it really matter?”

He’d had more profound thoughts, I’m sure, but his question was an interesting one. Watches, badges, earrings, depending on which side they’re worn, can indicate one’s gender or sexuality, in case it’s not already obvious (in which case, the ‘left or right’ dilemma is probably the least pressing).

“It makes me anxious,” he said, “these rules. I don’t know if I’m misrepresenting myself.” Throwing his hands dramatically in the air reminded me of Petra. “If I wear my watch on the right hand does that make me a girl?”
Wearing a bra does, I thought to myself.
“And if I wear an earring on my left ear, does that make me gay?”
“I think with the watch on your right hand it would make you a lesbian.” I said. Pete thought about it for a second, long enough for the excitement to wear off, imagined himself as Petra, stuffed bra and long hair, and unceremoniously switched his parting back, sweeping his hair across his brow so that it started at the left. Like a man.

The Crotch-Grabbing of Fate

In, what can only be described as a twist, a pirouette and a crotch-grabbing of fate, singer Michael Jackson today received a jury summons at his Neverland Valley Ranch in California – four months after he was acquitted on child molestation charges.

If anybody remembers the trouble lawyers had in finding a jury of his peers (although I think two-thirds female, and mostly white was about right), imagine the fun they’ll have with Jackson in the jury box. Although by the sounds of it, he could do with the $15 a day.

On his recent trip to London the singer spent only £85,000 in 30-minutes at Harrods. Looks like someone’s tightening the belt...

Rain Man

So, I’m standing outside my flat, in the rain, waiting for a cab in the busy rush hour traffic, when my neighbour walks by. We do the stop-and-chat thing. You know, how it goes.
“How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine.”

I extended things by asking where she was going.
“I’m just off to M&S to get some wine.”
“Ah,” I said, looked at my watch. Seeing that it was 10 minutes to closing time, I shouted over the noise of the traffic, “Well, you better quicken the pace!”

I mean, we don’t see each very other often. And, in doing the friendly neighbour thing, I didn’t want her to miss the shops. Besides, I think we had the stop-and-chat thing fairly covered. I was fine, she was fine, both our businesses were well. And anyway, I think you need the whole 10 minutes to get wine. You’ve got to get to the shop, you’ve got to decide the wine, you’ve got to queue. And nowadays you’ve got to factor for the charity collectors on the way, perhaps even alter your route.

My neighbour, on the other hand, thought this plenty of time, and perhaps mistook my volume for aggression, when in actual fact, I was just shouting over the traffic. “Ok,” she said, quietly, and then tip-toed away. Just as she did, a truck roared past.
“See you later!” I shouted. By the time my words reached her ears the noise had passed and all that remained was a screaming man in the rain.

The Big Three Killed My Baby

Oh, ITV. Is it not enough that you bombard us with bollocks programming every day? Were you not satisfied with your 50th Anniversary celebrations, reliving each year in what felt like real-time? Are you not filled with content when you produce yet another detective series with a maverick lead character? Why then, you gaudy yellow and blue thing, must you now interfere with my love life?

Okay, perhaps love life is a bit much. But when, last night, Lucia– a talented and charming, not to mention, gorgeous looking artist – wrote to alert me to her upcoming TV appearance I was, at first, hesitant. “I didn’t imagine that I’d see you next on ITV,” I wrote in my response. “Though you realise I’ll have to break my ‘no ITV’ rule to catch your show.”

And so I broke my rule. But not wanting to break the one that keeps me in the office, 9am-5pm, I programmed her lovingly into my PVR guide and returned home this evening, excited to be seeing her again, albeit on ITV. Imagine my disappointment then when I didn’t see Lucia on my screen, but instead an error message saying, that “the guide encountered a problem trying to download listings for this channel.”

The error message gave way to an e-mail alert. It was Lucia. “Hey, cheers for taking an interest in the programme!” she wrote. “I’d be interested to know what you think.”

I didn’t know what to think. The programme had not recorded. And so, what could have been a great opportunity to connect with Lucia on a personal level instead became another reason to hate ITV.

Think McFly. Think.

Another ghost from blog past is Vicky the Violinist. Remember the hot busker I asked out with the aid of a low-fat, savoury snack? (See Pretzel Logic) Well, it turns out, I’m seeing her again.

Don’t worry. I realise my actually dating a girl would probably bring about the demise of this here blog; and anyway, since my pretzel antics I’ve not heard a thing from young Vicky. So when I say I’m seeing her, I mean just that. She’s in the new McFly video.

Old Strangers

Connoisseur of the surreal, Louis Theroux, this week releases his first book, The Call of the Weird, in which he revisits the subjects of his television documentaries – the off-beat characters on the fringes of American society.

Tall, bespectacled and only just handsome, I often meet the comparison with the TV star, whom, I usually point out, was dubbed “the thinking woman’s crumpet” by a leading women’s magazine in 2001. As if to further our resemblance, this week I too found myself revisiting a subject of my blog.

You may remember a not-so-brilliant post that I wrote about an Indian-run chip shop on the fringes of the Shrewsbury town centre, and its blaspheming staff member that made a sincere effort to sound English.

Well, just yesterday, I saw him at his new place of work and, not content with now sounding English, his latest challenge, it seems, is to be a black man. Smiling behind the counter at McDonald’s, his newly acquired teeth gleaming like the golden arches, his hair a curious design, cut to appear like swept-back braided hair - “cornrows” I believe they’re called - he greeted me with the surprise of an old friend, when in actual fact - aside from both being Indian - we knew nothing about each other.

And, while I decided between fries and carrot sticks, he served the gentleman before me, a flustered looking, middle-aged man with greying hair and a temper fiery red. With the distinctive accent of upper-crust Britain and the manners of its stone-age ancestors, the man spat his order at the young immigrant. “And a bottle of Water,” he added.
Bagging the Big Mac, the young man reached for the fridge and asked in perfect RP, “was that a cup of tea?”
“No. A bottle of water, boy.”
And then with absolute grace, he handed over the water, took the man’s money and then, with a strange knowing glance my way – like old friends – said with a smile, “And here’s your change, sir,” before dropping the 50p piece into the charity box depository, just an inch from the man’s open hand. “Thank you.”

And with that, the man showed his ungleaming teeth, looked as though he was about to say something, but, unable to take from a children’s charity, simply walked away.

“And what can I get for you, my friend,” he said, as if he really knew me.
And, somewhat overwhelmed, I considered the last five minutes introduction enough, smiled – like an old friend – and gave him my order.

Kill the light, Save a Bird