The Time of My Life

Standing outside the Slaughtered Lamb a drunk San Franciscan to whom I had lent a lighter invited me to her home town for a holiday.

"What brought you to London?" I didn't particularly want to know but since we would be holidaying together I felt it only polite to ask.

"Well" She replied "I was working...and now...well, I'm kind of here illegally." She said with bravado. What if I was an immigration officer?

"Cool" I replied, I was not sure if I thought this was cool, I mean I didn't think it was uncool, I didn't really have an opinion. "Where were you working before you became an enemy of the state?"

"In a cupcake shop. But I want to study Human Rights at the London School of Economics."
She said earnestly.

"I work for Amnesty." And with that and without any further questions as to the nature of my role or indeed my personality she then begun to introduce me-undeservedly- to her friends as her 'hero'

I then spent a good ten minutes high fiving her once bespectacled friend Max having stolen his glasses. This made the process of high fiving harder because he couldn't see without his glasses and I couldn't see with them. Then after one rather elaborate hi five his glasses were knocked from my face on to the floor and were subsequently repatriated.

Just as we all discussed the finer points of my heroism a man ran out of the pub door.

"Oh my God!" He exclaimed in a slightly comic camp foreign accent "I've just had the time of my life downstairs!"

He was a friend of Max and the San Franciscan. "What happens downstairs?" We asked in unison.

He looked at us as if it was self evident
" Why, it's where people go to have the time of their life of course!" He gushed, still buzzing from having the time of his life.

"Why, it's where people go to have the time of their life of course!" I repeated mimicking his slightly comic camp foreign accent.


He looked down at me with narrowed eyes and said
"Ok, that was a bit racist, but that's ok because I've just had the time of my life."

"This is my friend Nicoli" said the San Franciscan  "He's Greek"
He nodded at me. And then he ran down the road as fast as he could.

Rubbish

My mother went to a series of austere Catholic schools.

Aged four she was shipped off to one such Catholic boarding school. On Tuesdays they had sewing class. My grandmother refused to buy my mother a sewing kit because she believed my mother was too young to handle scissors. 

The nuns were not impressed.

The evil sewing teacher nun said 

-Josephine, go and wait outside for the dustman.

-Why?

Asked my infant mother

-Because you're rubbish and the bin man is coming to collect you.

So every week my mother went and stood  outside waiting for the dustman to collect her. 

He never did.