Tales from the Overground

Wow it's nearly been a year

2011-03-12T19:36:00.000Z

And I have a new blog new blog...

http://downandoutinlondon.tumblr.com/

Blogger served me well but tumblr is prettier, plus you can link to cool content...

probably noone even noticed i'd gone

toodles

The prophecy comes true

2010-04-02T23:14:00.004+01:00

One of the first posts I wrote on this here blog was about how potentially dangerous stairs on buses are and how I feared the descent from the upper to lower deck on a daily basis.

I was sitting on the top deck of the 388- an irregular but handy little number that takes me from Blackfriars to Shoreditch. Its often deserted and so I like to go to the top deck, sit at the front and pretend I am king of the bus, I will occasionally whisper under my breath as I take up my new found office 'Ahhh king of the bus'. When it's sunny I can shut my eyes, prop my feet up on the shelf and bask in the glory of my kingdom.

The bus neared its destination and I noticed it was on diversion, the traffic had been horrendous and I thought I better make a dash for the next stop before it went off piste. There was a red light and there, I thought, was my chance to get down the stairs. I picked up my bag, and abdicated my throne. I stepped onto the top step- it was going well and then onto the second- ha this is easy- I was,after all, until a few moments earlier king of the bus, going down stairs should be easy for someone like me. And then The bus jolted forward. I lost my grip, my shoulder ricocheted hard on to the wall and some how I spun round on my heel making me fall backwards. I was not gracefully gliding down these stars I was crashing and bouncing and swearing. My back smashed against the wall at the bottom and propelled me to the ground as if I had been wrestled by some invisible assailant. It seemed to happen embarrassingly slowly and I found my self lying on the lower deck, on my back wondering if I was broken.

Surely someone is going to help me. Perhaps there is no one on the bus. But then I heard a hearty laugh. From a man. with a WALKING STICK. Men with walking sticks shouldn't laugh at people falling over. But then I surmised that perhaps this was sweet revenge and he looked a bit mad- so I left him to his amusement. Until he laughed again and nodded at me. There was no hand to help me up, no 'are you ok?' just a gentle mocking laughter as if he had been watching a fat person falling over whilst eating a cake. It was the morning of April 1st, perhaps this man took me for a fool

The walking stick clearly wasn't going to come to my aid but surely someone else might. I assumed that the bus was empty until I turned to the backseats, which were full. Of mostly middle class looking women. Staring. At me, me clearly in pain sprawled indelicately across the floor. And not one of them helped me or asked if I was ok, they just watched me, as if I was on television. One women made a half hearted attempt-she half stood up out of her seat before she decided, actually no, she wouldn't. Which I think is worse some how; to think of helping, to show willing but not commitment.

C****S

As it transpired I was left unscathed but for a disappointing bruise and a slightly pathetic limp-that looks fake.

I've no idea why they didn't help. Maybe they didn't like the fact that I'd been king of the bus. Pride does come before a fall they say- except the other day when I got confused and said pride after a fall-which of course makes no sense- but I think is a sentiment not without merit.

I ought to add that when I regaled my friend at work with this tale she said

"Oh my god, thats awful, and have you hurt your face?" SHe pointed at my chin.

"No" I said quietly "Thats a spot"

Embarrassed silence.

Currying Favour

2010-02-27T15:39:00.010Z

It was with sorrow that my housemate and I bid adieu to our washing machine. It had produced some fine work over the years, clean sheets, clean trousers... other clean things (although I only moved in a few weeks ago so this is pure conjecture).

So with a heavy a heart, a heavy hangover (the washing machine wake was a good one) and a heavier credit card I stood in Currys waiting for my housemate to come and chose a new washing machine.

Whilst I was waiting I explored the Aladdin's cave of competitively priced electronic goods until I happened upon a TV aerial that peaked my interest.

'Excuse me' I said to a man assigned to the TV department. 'How much is this?'

He took the box and beckoned me to follow him past promises of high definition, elaborate home cinemas and plasma televisions the size of market towns. We arrived at a computer and he paused and then turned to me and said...

'Can I just say something, I don't want you to be offended.'

'Oh no' I thought silently, he's going to tell me how tired I look and that my mascara has run down my sleep deprived face thus compounding the problem. Oh why is life lived in HD?

'OK' I capitulated.

'Now' he said seriously in a gentle Caribbean accent 'this is going to sound very unprofessional.'

I wanted to shout out: 'Yes, I know I went to bed at three and yes, I am still wearing yesterdays make up, but its Saturday and I am allowed to let my- as yet unwashed- hair down.'

'You have....' He paused again before sighing heavily and shaking his head 'The most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.'

'Ha!' say I to government studies into binge drinking- I thrive upon anything above and beyond the recommended number of units.

'I don't mean to stare, but seriously, I could look at them all day, so blue, so so blue.' He cocked his head to one side, as I laughed nervously. 'With that kind of beauty what am I supposed to do?'

I coughed loudly. From flattering to weird in just two easy steps.

He continued in this vein for a while until I said 'Stop it!' in a tone that said 'Thanks but also desist, you're creepy and you still haven't told me the cost of the aerial.'

'Ok' he said understanding my intonation 'I will stop.' He tried but then he started again 'But I am just going to have to look this way' He dramatically pointed in the other direction 'Because I cannot look at you, it pains me.'

Thanks a lot Keats!

So there we stood there for what seemed like an awkward hour or two whilst the computer crashed three times. In silence he forcedly looked the other way as if I was Medusa whilst I stared at my shoes and thought of terminal illnesses and dug my fingernails into my palms in an effort not to laugh.

'£34.99' He said triumphantly. 'But, you know, when Mr right comes along, tell him if he does anything wrong he has to come to me.'

I stayed silent but raised a confused eyebrow, I wanted to say 'But I don't even know your name and anyway in the unlikely event that Mr right does come along but then does something heinous how does one contact you? Should I just march him into Currys and make him wait until your shift?'

'And another thing' He continued sagely, passing the aerial back to me. 'Be careful, because there are a lot of sharks out there.'

I assumed he meant in terms of men and not actual sharks.

2010-01-24T22:11:00.002Z

The traffic was at a standstill through Cambridge Circus. It was Friday night and every where you looked there were people angrily texting friends to tell them they were going to be late.

There was condensation dripping down the windows that made it seem like the bus was sweating under the pressure of it's passengers expectations.

Then a robotic voice said:

"This bus is changing it's destination. Please wait for further instructions..."

No further instructions came and the over weight middle aged man with a squint who sat next to me said loudly

"Uhh well I guess we're going to Timbuktu then."

We didn't.

Last Night

2009-12-28T17:37:00.004Z

I dreamt that I was running around the sloping decks of The Titanic with a group of Chinese people who were being chased by hedgehogs that had been genetically engineered by Chairman Mao to run and track down dissidents.

2009-12-22T20:14:00.000Z

2009-12-22T20:09:00.002Z

I've been thinking about when the next really embarrassing thing is going to happen to me. It could happen at any time, at any place. It probably won't happen tonight because it is 20.10 and I am staying at my parents house and there is no one else here.

Tomorrow, however, I might go to Cambridge to do some last minute Christmas shopping, there has been a cold snap, the pavements are like slightly crap ice rinks, perhaps the next embarrassing thing will happen then. All I do know is that at some point something embarrassing is going to happen to me but no one knows when.

The death of the two tailed spider

2009-11-11T10:20:00.003Z

I went into the bathroom and froze. There sat an enormous spider, with a spike coming out of its back that looked like it wanted to kill me.

What happened next?

Well, first of all I stood at the otherside of the door and threw hairgrips at it I am, afterall, a girl. I hit it but it was precariously balanced on a soap dish and the hairgrips were too small to make an impact. So then I stood there for twenty minutes wondering if it was poisonous.

Then I looked at my flip flop. I took it off and tried to kill it by holding the flipflop at either end and then pushing down firmly, but then it danced away. So I put my flip flop back on.

I shut the bathroom door for a while and tried to pretend it wasn't there. But then I couldn't
convince myself that it wasn't there. Even when I almost believed myself, I knew I was lying.

So I opened the door again. It was still on the soap dish. Then I realised there was a large water bottle. So I tried to stab it. But then it jumped. And disappeared into a bucket. Which had water in it. The spider swam around. So I stabbed it again. And then it pretended to be dead. So I scrapped it across the side of the bucket with the edge of the bottle. And then it was definately dead. And then I went to sleep!

Blood on my hands.

michael?

2009-11-06T07:57:00.003Z

I was sitting on the floor cushions in the restaurant of my hotel. It was about eleven o'clock at night. Every so often the power would short and plunge the guests into darkness. A group of Israeli's sat to my left listening to bad music and smoking too many drugs.

One of the Israeli's had a jokey conversation with the waiter and ordered a drink as the waiter headed out i called for an orange juice. He nodded and smiled and headed into the darkness.

Ten minutes later after an interesting conversation with an Israeli Marxist a different waiter returned. On his tray sat a glass of juice.

'Michael' He called but was met with silence. 'Michael' He shouted again. We all looked at one another. There was no Michael here.
'Michael' The waiter persisted. Still no answer. Then the first waiter arrived. He took the tray from his colleague and bellowed.
'MICHAEL?!'
Michael was no where to be seen. The waiters shrugged at one another as the first waiter said more quietly.
'Michael?'
The two waiters whispered in the half light.

'Excuse me' I said. 'Is that an orange juice?'
'Yes. Michael?' the waiter replied.
'No Sarah although I might look like a Michael but that's definitely my drink.'

The waiter passed me the glass of juice to laughter of stoned Israelis.

A drop of Sherry

2009-10-16T16:41:00.005+01:00

I was standing in boots looking at blusher (as if my face wasn't embarrassing enough) when I noticed an old lady bent over her zimmer frame looking at lip stick. How brilliant, I thought that at that age she still wore lipstick.

I was in the queue later and the old women went to counter and asked for some assistance.

'Hello, sorry dear I've forgotten my glasses and I can't find this shade' She pulled out a stick of lipstick from her handbag. The lady behind the counter smiled and said something patronising like;

'Not having a very good day are we?'

I don't know why people insist of saying 'we' instead of 'you' to the ill, injured or infirm.

'No dear' Replied the women, now smiling relieved to have some help.

They walked over to the make up stand and the shop assistant looked at the various different lipsticks. They chatted away like they were old friends, which perhaps they were.

'So' said the shop assistant 'What is the name of this shade?'

'A Drop of Sherry' Replied the old women.

The highlight of my day

2009-10-13T11:39:00.005+01:00

I hate the sound of dry felt tip pens on paper. In fact hate is a bit weak; abhor, loathe, despise, I am perhaps even phobic. I don't know why or how it started but I literally can't bear it. If I accidentally find myself writing with a dry felt tip pen my instant reaction is to jump away in horror and contort my body into shapes of disgust, like some people do if they accidentally find a maggot in an apple they are eating or a severed finger in a crisp packet. Everyone has something they can't bare and this is my nails down a blackboard, my cracking of knuckles, my Bono.

Once when I was at work I had to leave the room because one of my colleagues was labelling up an envelope with an old marker pen; my eyes began to water and I excused myself immediately for fear I might vomit.

So, it was to my horror that a few days ago during rush hour, weighed down by bags, unable to move, I sat on the Piccadilly line next to a husband and wife couple who were trying to establish which one of the many highlighters they had in their bag worked.

Dry pen after dry pen was dragged across scrap paper as they tried to draw attention to some sentence or other. They were probably in their sixties and they had more highlighter pens than an average office. This succession and repetition of neon lasted my entire journey, why would they have so many dried up marker pens, and what was so important that they must highlight it now?

My eyes began to water, of all the people they could sit next to, they had to sit next to me, probably the only person on the entire tube network with an irrational fear of dry nibs. I scowled at them as I turned up my ipod, but the scrapping noise penetrated even that. I dug my fingers into the palm of my hands but the pain did nothing to dull the actual pain of being there. They must have wondered why I was tutting and scowling and listening to Canned Heat so loudly. Little did they know or understand what they were putting me through. I gagged twice and the second time coincided with their joy of finding a working highlighter.

I shuddered and huffed and alighted at Finsbury park.

Roadkill

2009-10-06T20:13:00.006+01:00

I continue to wobble around the countryside on my 14th birthday present. The main aim of these explorations is to not get fat but also to get out of the house.

On Saturday I cycled home from my brothers house in Cambridge, I say cycle, stagger would be more accurate. It is about 18 miles and flat all the way which makes it easy but also means there are no downward hills to make you forget what you're doing for a minute. It took me about two hours which I didn't think was too bad and I went the long way round so as to avoid the traffic. At one point I thought I'd discovered a new species of rodent, a massive rat possibly, but then I realised it was a rabbit with his ears back who scampered into a corn field when I approached him.

I have also seen a lot of dead things:

x2 rats

x3 pheasants

x1 deer- so newly dead he would have been alive five minutes earlier.

x1 tail without a body

x1 fox

x loads of hedgehogs but they don't count because they are born to be flattened.

x1 Perfectly decent looking pair of levis discarded in a field. I considered picking them up but then became worried they might be of importance to an impending murder enquiry so left them where they were.

I also saw a mini tornado in a field but that sounds like a lie and so I won't waste my time describing it to you.

Shortly before I fell in to a ditch

2009-09-24T23:55:00.000+01:00

Blick-Breeze

2009-09-24T23:08:00.007+01:00

I am currently on a break from work (ahem... unemployed) and am staying with my parents in the 'picturesque market town of Saffron Walden'. Here in the rolling Essex countryside you can admire the 15th century church, buy a portrait of Victoria Beckham (in pastels) for £120 in the local library and then get drunk in Wetherspoons before starting a fight in the street with some squaddies.

Having now exhausted the options above I am filling my time incrementally, with worthy pursuits, such as; reading, baking, ironing and today I can add to this litany; cycling.

My dad kindly retrieved my bike from the shed and pumped up the cracked tyres as I dusted it down, screaming loudly whenever a spider emerged from the mud guard and tried to eat me. The bike was a birthday present for my 14th birthday, and was received all those years ago after rather obsessive research on my part, it is a dusty purple and green Raleigh with twelve gears and a bit of rust. Apart from the ominous squeaking breaks and the cobwebs that had soldered themselves to the handlebars, it is in remarkably good condition given its recent lack of activity.

Having relinquished my membership to the gym and spent the last week eating curries and fry ups (not at the same time) I was long overdue some exercise. I heaved my bike round the side of the house and on to the not-very-mean-at-all streets. I cycled down the road in competition with a teenage boy with ill-advised bleach blond hair and headed out of town, past Audley End House and straight towards the middle of nowhere.

The middle of nowhere is a nice place to be, bar the M11 that runs a scar across the countryside, the constant swoosh of speeding vehicles is rarely silenced. I rode around the country roads without any kind of map or direction, occasionally singing Beyonce, and thinking about and deciding against a gin and tonic stop. I cycled over the motorway bridge, got mild vertigo and then staggered up a rather steep hill.

The sharp afternoon sunlight on the chalky soil of the fields made it look like a strange kind of sea, so I stopped to take a picture. I haphazardly left my bike at the side of the road at an odd angle (that prompted one driver to slow right down to check no one had been knocked off it) and jumped over a ditch to find the right angle for the shot. As I took the photo I was dive bombed by a wasp- from a distance I would have appeared to be dancing. The wasp wouldn't leave me alone so I did a strange,wobbly staccato run back to my bike. I leapt over the ditch and looked around for the wasp. I had outrun it. Ha I laugh in the face of you-wasp. I stood there for a second and there was a loud buzzing that hit me on the face, I screamed raised my arms into the air and fell backwards into the ditch.

As luck would have it the ditch wasn't deep, the wasp did not succeed in stinging me and I had just managed to avoid a cluster of nettles. I jumped up quickly, the road was deserted so my dignity was in tact. As I lifted my bike up from the ground an old lady pulled up beside me. Strangely I was a bit unnerved. Maybe she was an old aged murderer. Instead of cycling away, I waited, just to see if she was. She took quite a long time to get out of the car and I stood there nervously- I just had to know.

"Hello" I said.

"He-low" She replied in an incredibly posh voice.

"Lovely day" I said-this is what people say to each other in the countryside.

"Yeasss, I am just going to see if there are any blick-breeze". That's blackberries to you and I.

She wasn't a murderer.

"Good luck" I said before mounting my bicycle, I looked out for Blick-Breeze, but its near the end of the season and they all looked a bit hopeless so i shouldn't think she was very successful.

Oi...

2009-09-17T21:50:00.009+01:00

Today I encountered a rubbish beggar.

She was sitting next to a row of cash points. Rather than meekly asking for money, or starting up a conversation she just shouted:

"Oi, YOU GOT ANY MONEY?"

She was a bit frightening and so I politely ignored her. Then she screeched once again

"Oi, YOU GOT ANY MONEY?" I shrugged.

"Oi" She jumped up and I flinched. "Oi" She shouted again. I smiled at her trying not to look too middle class and scared. "Not you love" she pushed me out of the way and headed towards a long haired Frenchmen "Can I buy a fag off you?" She stood inches from his face and whilst she phrased it as a question it was in fact a demand.

The Frenchmen looked at her, shrugged and with cigarette stuck to his bottom lip mumbled nonchalantly "Non, you can 'ave one". (This is a dead description because surely everything a French person mumbles is nonchalant)

"Cheers mate" She said before returning to her concrete sofa and shouting "Oi, YOU GOT ANY MONEY?"

2009-09-15T21:49:00.001+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgq78FqrPXI&feature=player_embedded#t=41

2009-09-12T22:33:00.005+01:00

Me: Please can I have an orange juice and lemonade.

Barman: Sure.

Gets bottle of orange juice and puts it into glass.

Barman: Ice?

Me: Yes please. Are you going to put any lemonade in that?

Barman: Excuse me?

Me: Lemonade?

Barman: Lemonade?

Me: Yes. I asked for an orange juice and lemonade?

Barman: An orangejuice WITH lemonade!?!

Me: Yes.

Barman looks confused.

Me: Orange juice and lemonade. In the same glass. I'm not sure what more I can tell you...

Barman: Ok.

Passport to nowhere

2009-08-23T21:13:00.006+01:00

I hate any kind of bureaucracy as it induces in me Kafkaesque delusion. Last year I had to fill out a tax return for the first time and received many hours of therapy from various staff members at the inland revenue who would gently reassure me that it was 'unlikely I would go to prison for fraud.' So it was with a heavy heart that I booked an appointment to get a new passport.

As the fear of form filling set in so did the horror of the passport photo. A passport photo, like a dog, is not just for Christmas; it travels with you, for ten years, and if you get kidnapped in a foreign country it ends up on the news. This panicked me. I must remember to supply my friends with a series of approved photographs that they can distribute to news agencies in that event.

Vanity took me to Snappy Snaps to have a real person take my picture rather than a machine with a voice. I don't think the women in the shop understood the gravity of the situation and after several attempts I settled for an average representation of my features. In the photo I have the complexion of cheddar and one eyebrow raised in a quizzical fashion, I hope this is not seen as an affront to immigration officials at airports, I am not questioning their authority nor the splendour of their country.

When I arrived at the passport office my slightly disappointing photo suddenly didn't seem so bad as I looked at the girl in front of me in the queue . She was about 18, with the longest false eyelashes I have ever seen and bright blue hair; something I fear she will come to regret when she is 25 and a lawyer travelling to Washington DC for her 'big break'.

At the passport office,they believe themselves to be an airport-perhaps because of the association of travel. As a result your belongings are x-rayed and you are frisked, but the staff are very nice and as they frisk you ask if you are having a nice day and tell you that you look a bit tired and that its lucky you are going on a holiday soon.

I was issued with a ticket with a number on it, like at a deli counter. I sat down and waited for my number to be called. 1969. This was harder than it sounds as the numbers are called out without any logical order.

'1987'

'2045'

'30040'

'1'

They might as well be shouting out;

'cow'

'sandwich'

'orange juice'

'girl guides'

I was there for about 20 minutes when the robot voice of god boomed

'1961'

Nobody moved. There was a pause of a few minutes

'1961'

Still no takers. 'What an idiot!' I thought. '...why would you take a ticket and leave without telling anyone?' I tutted and muttered something about people being inconsiderate. '1961' was called a few more times before they gave up.

A few minutes later:

'1969'

I stood up and showed a man with a walkie-talkie my ticket so he could tell me which counter to go to. He looked at me. He looked at my ticket.

'You've missed it!' He said.

'What? No I haven't!' I said indignantly as I snatched the ticket back. There in black emboldened numbers was written;

'1961'

I shouldn't hate bureaucracy, its not bureaucracy's fault, its mine.

You know...for bears

2009-08-16T20:56:00.011+01:00

The other day I was standing at the bar of a once brilliant- now awful- pub in Islington whose declivity is reflected in the fact that the menu doesn't refer to cheese as cheese but rather as "cow's curd."

The women standing next to me was incredibly posh with blond hair and an expensive handbag; she was anything between 28 and 40 years old- probably closer to 28 but her sloaney outfit betrayed her youth. She was in conversation with the bar man, I had been waiting a while and so resented their false camaraderie until the conversation turned...

Woman: Oh god I'm just so shattered at the moment...

Barman: Really?

Woman: Yah, my sister and I have just started a charity. I'm working all the hours God's sends its farking awful.

Barman: That sounds great though, what kind of charity?

Woman: A bear charity.

Barman: A bear charity?

Woman: Yes, that's right, a charity for bears

Barman: What kind of bears?

Woman: ALL bears (she pauses) we DON'T discriminate.

God bless you Islington. God bless you

In the right direction

2009-08-12T23:36:00.007+01:00

I've discovered my new favourite thing, it costs me nothing, but fills me with self worth and a sense of achievement.

London makes people so inhibited that they will happily stand for hours lost and confused, squinting at a map not wishing to ask for help. It is my belief that there are probably people who have been standing on street corners in Soho for months- not selling their wares but rather trying to establish where.

I won't just help people who ask me...no the real work is to be done with those who won't or can't ask. Their little lost faces light up as I point them in the right direction, they weep with gratitude and I stride off...often in the wrong direction- but that doesn't matter because at least they know where they are going.

I would recommend you try it; it's budget philanthropy for those who can't afford the real thing.

Hair like ice cream. Ice cream like hair

2009-08-10T22:42:00.003+01:00

Whoop whoop its the sound of the police

2009-08-06T20:38:00.008+01:00

About ten days and quite a lot of penicillin later I was coughing like a miner (not a minor) so I decided to go back to the doctors.

The doctor I had seen previously was all booked up so I went to see my least favourite doctor. She is my least favourite because

a. she always looks very serious

b. she nods very seriously whilst I talk

and

c. she is very serious.

She has a long face and quite a severe hair cut, I imagine she is married to either a vet or a vicar and I think she spends much of her time day dreaming about owning a cheese shop or having an affair with the owner of a cheese shop.

I explained about the noise and the coughing. She nodded seriously. She had a listen, she said the noise was but a whisper and that a piece of asthmatic equipment that can act like a nebuliser, some steroids and a rest should do the trick.

Then she paused.

'Now' she said seriously 'I'm not by any means suggesting you have this...'

'Oh god, I'm dying' I thought

'...but' she continued with severity 'there's this website.'

'I have a website in my lungs?' I wondered silently.

'...compiled by a GP. This website is dedicated entirely to adult whooping cough'

I don't know why it isn't spelt hooping cough, whooping cough sounds like an illness you should only have during significant periods of celebration.

'Now, you can go on the site and listen to recordings of coughing, and if your cough sounds like the cough on the website, you probably have whooping cough' She said matter-of-factly.

'So, here I am in a doctors surgery and you are sitting near me and I keep on coughing, but you are unwilling to tell me if I have whooping cough but rather are asking me to go and listen to recordings of coughs on the internet and diagnose myself....isn't that your job?'

Of course I didn't say that. What I did say was;

'What if I have it?'

'Oh' she said seriously 'there's no cure, but its nice to know!'

'Is it?'

I left and went home to study www.whoopingcough.net

I shouldn't have been so scornful, its probably the best website ever! It's run by a doctor who bares more than a passing resemblance to Harold Shipman. He says;

"My mission is to make health professionals aware that whooping cough is much more common than they realise, that it now affects ALL AGES....This site gives relief to those who have it but cannot get anyone to believe them... "

God bless him!

Apparently...

"Attempts to get benefit from cough suppressants or antibiotics are generally futile"

and most damningly...

"Whooping cough is estimated to be 100 times more common than official statistics show!"

In your face statistics!

If you think you or someone you know has whooping cough, please click here

...I don't

What ails me

2009-08-03T20:50:00.003+01:00

I started finding it difficult to breathe.

Breathing became something I thought about all the time occasionally having to remind myself to inhale.

This is a strange sensation akin to when some says "think about blinking!" Suddenly this is all you can think about and you start blinking repeatedly like someone who has just been woken up by having a bright light shone in their face.

The lack of breathing had been causing me to have nightmares about asphyxiation and occasionally I'd feel faint, so I thought, I'll go to the doctors, that's what I'll do. So I did.

I told the doctor what was happening, he stethoscoped me and said with some ambiguity, "You have a noise on your lung" he did not extrapolate as to what kind of noise, was it a hiss or a rattle or a disconcerting whistle? We shall never know for he did not say. "This indicates you have a lung infection."

I looked at him blankly as he gave me a prescription for penicillin.

"Thank you" I said not thinking to ask any questions. "I've been feeling pretty..."

"...Crappy" he interrupted.

"Yes" I said.

"Right, well thanks for coming in and sorry you're feeling so shit!"

"Erm..thanks" He nodded and smiled and showed me the door.

Sort of like Romeo

2009-07-16T21:16:00.003+01:00

I was sitting on the 236 bus when my eye was drawn to an old man standing on the third floor balcony of a tower block. The man was chatting to his son, enjoying a can of special brew wearing nothing but his underpants. The son was fully clothed in a navy track suit and there they stood leaning over the railings passing the time of day, watching the world go by, drinking beer in various states of dress and undress.

I stared at them quite rudely believing myself to be invisible behind the obviously transparent bus window- I didn't realise they were watching me watching them- perhaps that's the definition of snobbery.

The old man with his sinuous limbs and lank yellow hair that stuck to his fore head and cheeks like a veil reminded me of Iggy Pop. The son had just the same face as the father; both wore an expression of acceptance mixed with disillusion.

After a few seconds Iggy Pop raised his can in the air, nodded and I think...although it was quite far away, winked suggestively at me.

Another eligible suitor for my collection; and they say its hard to meet men in London!

Songs about Dogs

2009-07-15T14:50:00.001+01:00

http://open.spotify.com/user/sarahross25/playlist/0WovEZdkO93XAlMyDh4HNr

2009-07-14T13:49:00.003+01:00

I screamed and my friend lifted her legs in the air and squeeked.

"Excuse me" I said to the barmaid. "There's a massive mouse in the fireplace" Prompting me to wonder if 'massive mouse' was an oxymoron.

"I know" she said casually "a man came to kill him."

I felt sad.

Hang on a minute

2009-07-08T00:06:00.005+01:00

Sometime ago I was waiting for a friend outside the Tate Modern.

It was a Saturday and there were people wandering around pretending to know where they were going but not really having a clue. (I recognise the signs as I do this all the time, techniques include; looking at one's watch, looking at one's phone, looking at other people in the hope that they are just as confused as you.)

Two men walked around the corner. They stopped and looked up at the imposing brick work, the straight lines, the big signs. One of them took out his guide book, searched for the relevant page and on finding it he slowly rotated the book-as if turning it upside down might make sense of the world.

They looked at each other in confused silence and then the man with the guidebook said in surprise...

"Hang on a minute" He exclaimed in a shrill American accent "This isn't Shakespeare's Globe!"

The Time of My Life

2009-06-28T16:25:00.015+01:00

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

2009-06-22T15:45:00.003+01:00

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.

Children in suits are creepy

2009-05-10T19:41:00.003+01:00

Today I was waiting at the bus stop and along came a child of about 10 in a suit. He was unaccompanied and stern of face. He carried a clip board.

The suit was shiny and light grey and pin stripped. It was a sunny day, the kind of day where ten year old children should be running around the street, throwing water bombs at passing strangers and not wearing suits.

I'm not sure where he had been, I'm not sure where he was going, but looked like he took life very seriously.

Much more seriously than me.

I think perhaps he was a tiny business man.

For a moment I considered asking for general life advice.

But then I thought, no, he is ten.

A brief dalliance in delusion

2009-04-18T23:33:00.008+01:00

I was sitting in the gym changing room.

I was alone.

Then I heard a voice...

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

It was a small American voice, not the voice of a child exactly, more like that of a tiny under-nourished androgynous adult.

I looked around.

I was still the only person in the room.

I must have imagined it.

I carried on getting changed.

"Hello" repeated the diminutive Yank.

I looked around. There was DEFINITELY nobody else in the room.

"Is anybody there?" persisted the voice.

"Oh my god." I thought "This is it, it's finally happened, I am hearing voices."

I looked around once again, I knelt on the floor to check there was no one trapped behind the lockers and to check to see if I could see a borrower (I wish I could say at this point I'm exercising poetic license, but I really did check).

"Hello" The soft voice asked again.

"What should I do?" I pondered "Should I reply? Should I tell one of my friends? I might be on medication for the rest of my life. But no, I can't reply because then that would be to make the voice real."

"Is anyone there?"

No! The voice was trapped inside my head.

I sat down on the bench.

"What if this is the voice I'm always going to hear?" My mind raced with questions as I continued to be asked if anyone was there "It has a really annoying accent, this is a disaster. I at least wanted a voice with some gravitas, this voice is just whining and a bit shy."

Just as I thought this I lent back on one of the lockers.

The voice sounded again and as it did the locker gently vibrated.

I quickly looked around and then put my ear to the locker. I was about to say "Hello?" When I realised that the voice was someone's idiot ring tone and not that of a borrower, nor my brain.

That above process lasted around 45 seconds.

So to conclude I'm not actually mad, well only in the respect that I'm not hearing voices, I suppose I might be a bit to believe I actually was, and a little madder still, to briefly consider the possibly that the voice belonged to a Borrower!

Love

2009-04-13T15:10:00.004+01:00

A few months ago I was walking round Highbury corner when a man stopped me.

"Hello" He said. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"Yes" I replied hurredly, even though this wasn't true.

"I'm not surprised you're very pretty" He lamented.

"Oh well" I said.

"It's a shame you have a boyfriend. If you didn't I would have to take you on a date"

"Ok bye" Said I.

"Such beautiful eyes" He whispered with a dying fall.

He was a tramp.

2009-04-13T00:44:00.003+01:00

Today I met a Bassett Hound, with ginger eyebrows and a hangdog expression. He was tied to a lamppost. As I approached he wagged his tail and so I bent down patted him on the head and told him he was lovely. He looked embarrassed and I left.

I spend approximately 5% of my waking hours and perhaps 10-15% of my dreams considering how much happier my life would be were I to own a dog. I think of Norfolk Terriers, Beagles and Jack Russell's and wonder at the amazing Beagle/Jack Russell cross-bread aka Jacakabee (were I to get one I would obviously name it Sir Derek) but until today I had not considered Bassett Hounds to be a contender.

But as I walked away from my chance encounter I thought of how happy I would be if only I had a Bassett Hound and so now I'd say they are in with a chance.

2009-04-11T15:54:00.001+01:00

I wish people on buses wouldn't whip my face with their dreadlocks.

the teddy bear

2009-02-28T10:28:00.003Z

"Oh Andy he's such a lovely bloke, I call him my teddy bear."

That's nice I thought as I absent mindedly eavesdropped.

"I mean seriously, he is such a lovely bloke." Her friend made a sound like "hmmm"

"He has just got out of prison though". Her friend turned to her.

"Oh yes" she said "What he do?"

"Manslaughter. Although don't know how they got it down to that. He did reverse over the bloke. Twice"

"God!" Said her friend.

"No but seriously he is lovely. You just can't push him or he'll loose it"

"The thing is" said her friend "There will always be someone to push him"

The woman paused "I hadn't thought of it like that"

2009-02-14T12:37:00.000Z

Stairs on wheels

2009-02-14T11:00:00.006Z

The bus was packed. I will never, I thought, get a seat. I will just never get one. I will be standing the whole way, silently hating all these smug strangers with their bums on slightly sticky, uncomfortable seats.

I stood at the bottom of the staircase, a fat lady and a businessman came down meant that there would be a seat for me, a place for me to be happy, to silently love all my fellow passengers and wish them well for their days. As I climbed I began wondering, as I often do, about how many people a day fall down the stairs on double decker buses.

I found a seat by a window that was dripping with the heat of the daily commute. Sometimes when I'm feeling woozy on the top deck I fixate on the inevitable and dangerous descent that awaits me when I arrive at my stop.

'Please don't fall' I prey 'It will be painful, but mostly embarrassing and I will have to pretend I did it on purpose' A bit like when you see someone stumble in the street and then the stumble evolves into a small jog as if this was the stumble-ee's intention all along and their stumbling was by way of a small warm up before the real spurt of activity.

If one was at school and the only way to get to class was to go up and down stairs that were on wheels that stopped abruptly without warning, the parents would have doubts about the education provided and worry about the danger posed by their child's perilous journey to the classroom. The health and safety lobby would be making banners saying "Our children are in danger, ban the mobile staircases. No!".

But for some reason this insane practise on a bus is ok. I have never seen anyone fall down the stairs, but I think that's by luck, not design. One day 700 people will fall down different staircases across the length and breadth of the bus network and then London transport will have to replace the stairs with elevators. And that would be cool, until people got stuck in them and they would be banned too.

Oranges

2009-02-08T14:14:00.004Z

I was just sitting on the number 19 going down Blackstock Road. It's Sunday, the bus is quite quiet. Someone rings the bell so the bus pulls over at the next bus stop. Then the driver gets out, blocking the rest of the bus from the front with the door. I think, oh damn he's waiting for the next driver this could take ages and I'm already late.

But then the driver gets out, looking a bit nervous, as if he is doing something he shouldn't. He runs to the shop and picks up an orange, considers it, places it back and then picks up 5 other oranges. He places these 5 oranges in a plastic bag, looking around swiftly as if he were buying drugs- he pays the shopkeeper and runs back on the bus with the large bag of oranges, he avoids eye contact with the passengers, because to look at them would be to acknowledge what had just happened. He closes the door and starts the engine and I alight at Finsbury Park.

A new hat

2008-11-30T11:46:00.003Z

I have a new hat.

It is a black trilby with a cream ribbon around it.

When I first bought my hat, which was on a Friday, I imagined life in my new hat, things we would do, people we would meet, places we would go to.

My new life in my new hat.

How I would laugh in my new hat.

In my new hat I would dance around pubs where people would try and borrow it so that they too could delight in a life with such a hat.

One day I will lose this hat on a bus.

Because that is what happens.

Walking

2008-11-26T13:11:00.004Z

I've taken to walking around the streets of London and it has come to my attention that London is one giant pinball machine and I am the ball baring.

I thought it was because I am small and because people are rude that I seem to spend my time bouncing off people, walls and door ways but now I realise that obviously somebody in a parallel universe is playing London-themed pin ball. Every time I get barged, pushed, nudged or banged on the head by a crazy women with a fake Louis Vuitton bag it is not the carelessness of others but the design of a sadistic pinball addict somewhere other than here.

I hate pinball and shall now boycott it on humanitarian grounds.

How much is a million

2008-10-04T16:59:00.004+01:00

The other day I was on the bus going up Holloway road when a quite intimidating gang of 4 boys got on. They slouched up the stairs and limped with attitude down the aisle towards the back of the bus, where they splayed, dotting themselves in various seats that maximised the space they took up. One of them started playing music from his phone.

'Oh shut up! I hate you' I grumbled silently.

Then one of them picked up the news paper. "500 billion bail out!" shouted one. This seemed to pick them all out of their malaise.

"How much is that...how much money would it take to fill up this bus?" asked another on of them.

"A Million!" Shouted the third one enthusiastically.

"Nah bruv, no way." he paused "In what notes?"

"Five pound notes. One million in five pound notes. It would take up this whole bus, we would drown, drown in a million pounds" He whispered the last bit, wistfully, as if this is was an ideal death.

"No way, one million pounds would be too big? It would never fit" Said the fourth one who until now had been silent."10, 000 pounds, how big is that?"

"The size of a large table...Remember? We saw it on that tv show..."

This conversation went on for ten minutes and was quite entertaining, musing as they did not just about this bus but other types of bus, single deckers, bendy buses, it ended when they got to their stop and bounded from the bus, enthused by their recent debate, alighting as a different group of men. I have no idea what one million pounds looks like and probably never will...Unless the world economy submits to hyper inflation and we all have to take suitcases of money to the supermarket in the hope of buying a loaf of bread.

Its all in the timing

2008-09-25T22:40:00.002+01:00

When I was enrolling in a course this morning, I asked the man how to get to the campus. He said it was about 8 minutes from the tube station.

It made me realise how rushed everyone in London is. Obviously this is nothing new as people love to say "oh London, its so hectic, everyone's is so rude and ALWAYS in a rush". But so rushed we are that when asked how far something is, we rarely say a 10 minute walk or a 5 minute walk but find it more favourable to say an 8 minute walk or a 3 minute walk.

In most other instances we might round up to the nearest 5 or 10, but not when it comes to one's proximity to public transport. When I lived with my parents I would think nothing of walking 20 minutes into town, but I wouldn't dream of doing that in London. Because conversely if something is father away than we would like in London and we would prefer to get a bus but know its a bit lazy we exaggerate the time, so a 20 minute walk becomes half an hour.

Gordon Brown

2008-09-15T14:23:00.003+01:00

I didn't see Gordon Brown on a train, but I did listen to a conversation about him...

Two middle aged women argued about David Miliband and then mused perhaps Alan Johnson might be the person to show the public that the government 'cared'.

One of them suggested Gordon Brown "Might just need to swallow his jaw!". How this would help , or indeed how he would acheive this without dying I don't know . They talked about his family problems but then decided his family problems were nothing in comparison to Sarah Palin's calling her children "Trig" and "Track" as she does.

"I would like a coalition government featuring Vince Cable" The first woman said. Her bespectled friend responded.
"I mean they used to work as a partnership Blair and Brown and they must have hated it but it worked...Like Lennon and McCartney together they were phenomenal, apart it all goes wrong. I mean look at McCartney...The Mull of Kintyre...you just can't explain something like that away."

"Is that a simile or a metaphor?" Asked her friend.

"I'm not sure" she replied.

Then they were silent.

Nutella

2008-08-26T12:29:00.004+01:00

Sitting on the no 43 heading at a pace towards all the broken promises of Holloway road I was briefly deafened by a woman with too much perfume on. I looked up and she was shouting:

"NO MATE NO! CHURCH STREET...YEAH THE ONE WITH THE CHURCH ON IT"

And so the excited rant went on before she put the phone down and began to roll a cigarette. I watched the precision with which she pulled the strands of tobacco from one another before placing it on the rizla and after a few seconds returned to my book so I could continue to struggle with the rudimentary causes of the Spanish Civil War.

A few seconds later the stench of her perfume was muddled with another more homely smell, a smell that took me back to my glutinous adolescence. I looked up and she was eating a slice of brown bread piled high with nutella. It was as if she had made it there and then, because if it had been in a sandwich bag, surely all the nutella would have come of on to the cellophane?

Perhaps, I thought, she was a magician and she had conjured this wonderous snack from the remnants of her rolly.

She got off the bus at Archway, I felt nothing.

Journeys into an unknown nostril

2008-08-18T17:08:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I sat opposite a man who at first glance looked like any other thick-rim bespectacled, man bag carrying, check shirt wearing, London based 30-something male (I have just described my boyfriend but this is not he).

On closer inspection he had a comb-over, a greasy blond comb-over at that. His glasses were quite mid 90s in a Germanic sort of way, his man bag was probably from Next in a not very nice sort of way and the check of his shirt was ill considered in a yellow and grey sort of colour-way.

He was reading a book entitled Winston's War which was not, as you might expect, the tale of the perennially mute market stall holder and the conflicts he endured during his fruitful career in Walford. No, this was "a compelling new novel exploring Winston Churchill’s remarkable journey from the wilderness to No 10 Downing Street at the beginning of World War II." by Michael Dobbs.

Now, I mention this man, not for his choice of book, but rather his actions whilst reading it.

I was looking at the floor, I like the floor and looking at it. Then I looked up and the man, we shall call him Helmut, was picking, neigh rooting, neigh excavating his right nostril. Fine I thought perhaps he is scratching, but this went on for about a minute. Deeper and deeper into the void did his right index finger venture. Surely he must realise that the curly haired stranger sitting next to me and I were watching in horror/ morbid fascination at this display. He did not. Because then his index finger retreated from its hermitage and was met by his thumb and together they rolled the snot retrieved into a tiny ball, flicking it and then repeating the whole scene a second time. To pick once may be regarded as a misfortune; to pick twice looks like

disregard for the rules.

'What rules?' You say.

'You know,' I say ‘the rules’.

Nausea on the Northern Line

2008-08-14T12:51:00.003+01:00

At present I mostly get the bus, hence the title of this blog but sometimes I venture underground and today I got the Northern Line from London Bridge, it was filled with Polish people, I think they were Polish, there were lots of them and they seemed quite happy.

My mood had been buoyed by the fact that I had seen probably the world's most amazing puppy. He was gadding about, attempting to eat his lead and looking happy (perhaps he was Polish). His owner walked beside him, glowing with pride as she watched the hearts of her fellow commuters melt into their collective metaphorical briefcase (I say metaphorical errouneously, because actually it was literal, all the commuters carried one giant briefcase with their days work all mixed up together so that on opening it they found, to their dismay, that there was in fact no order to the world and so submitted to chaos and half baked dreams of one day owning a small Polish puppy). I digress.

So I got on the High Barnet branch and browsed the Metro and became briefly enamoured by multi gold medal winning swimmer Michael Phelps -did you know that he's arm span is longer than his height- I wonder if it would hurt if he hugged me and also would his arms go round twice? The girl to my left elbowed me. I glared at her; she had a Roman nose and liked to talk to her friend about club night listings, tonight they will go to an electro-clash and house night in Kings Cross, I know because she was shouting, she may have been Polish.

Hung-over, was I. An underground train can sometimes be good for a hangover, so dark and miserable is it, but no so today because today I felt as if the train was sinking. Just as the girl on my left had made the decision to enjoy an evening of House music I noticed some nose hairs sitting on my right. The hair came not from the nostrils, but from the bridge of the nose, this is a common enough occurrence but most people trim them.

He was staring at me not in that surreptitious, ‘I’m staring at you, but you're staring at me too and this is allowed because this is a municipal transportation system’ way. No, this was just staring in the ‘not allowed regardless of the public nature of my journey’ kind of way. Even more off putting was the fact that because he was sitting next to me it meant that he had to turn a full 90 degrees to do so. Even more off putting than that was the stench, the putrid fragrance that came, perhaps from the nose hairs themselves, perhaps from his jacket but more probably from his trousers. For me what is worse than an awful smell is the thought of the awful smell; how it got there? how long had it been there? could he smell it? Then I gagged for several seconds. I think he saw me retch. At the next stop I moved seats and sat at the other end of the carriage.

On taking my new found seat I was greeted by the oomptcha oomptcha sound from the head phones of the man opposite me. He wore round dark glasses, a Motorhead hoody which had a picture of a skull with tusks on it-it looked like an angry dead walrus- and his hair was mousy brown, long and lank and sat veil-like across his pasty forlorn face. He was wearing rather smart shorts, which was odd. He got off the train at Camden Town. Obviously.