strangers on a train

Boarding a train for Liverpool Street at Shenfield, I found myself in a carriage with two blokes, one of them loudly groaning: ‘I’m a mong!’ Oh great, I thought, settling into a corner, determined to maintain a low profile. It transpired - I couldn’t help but listen - that the guy was a pissed Scotsman addressing his sleeping friend. Of course the friend was equally pissed, and when he awoke, they set about imitating train noises and announcements, singing, and wondering whether each station we passed through was Borehamwood. Stratford seemed to fox them totally for some reason (‘What the fuck? Stratford?’), but as we headed towards Liverpool St. they seemed to recover from their confusion, and started talking about ‘London toon, the fuckin’ capital’. It was like they really had just got on the train at Glasgow and headed for London on a drunken whim. A few days later they’d wake up homeless on a London street, having completely forgotten their old lives.

Anyway, they didn’t seem especially aware of me until we pulled into Liverpool St. and I heard one of them say: ‘There’s a George Galloway look-alike!’ I looked up to see the other one blearily attempting to focus his hostile stare on me. Fantastic, I thought, I’m going to get beaten up for looking like George Galloway. Who I do not even remotely resemble. But they shuffled on, and when I got up and looked into the next carriage there was someone who looked exactly like George Galloway. It might even have been him, fresh out of Celebrity Big Brother. You were sharper than I gave you credit for, I thought, a little chastened, as I watched them walk off down the platform. Arms around each others’ shoulders, they were singing I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside. By the way, it was four in the afternoon.

dogs and monsters

We went to Hannah’s future home in Wickford for a takeaway curry. Her boyfriend Paul wasn’t there and she had to look after the dogs. The dogs are two German shepherds, Rocky and Tammy, the latter having a bit of a reputation. She bit (Hannah says ‘nipped’) my brother in the park (Hannah claims he was ‘behaving suspiciously’ at the time) and there have been other reported incidents. So I wasn’t wholly looking forward to the evening. I pictured the dogs looming over us, as in some totalitarian nightmare in which you might suddenly be condemned to death for a crime you didn’t even know existed - reaching for an onion bhaji ‘suspiciously’, for example. Of course it was nothing like that. Rocky, only two, is quite puppyish - disconcerting in a beast the size of a small horse, but not without its charm - and Tammy… well, Hannah was very careful to introduce Tammy to the room gradually, and she was really quite good, only erupting in frenzied rage when something out of the ordinary happened. Like someone standing up.

Amusingly, Tammy’s edgy forays into the room were always accompanied by Rocky ‘playing’ his squeaky rubber toy, heightening the tension with a crescendo of squeaks like something from a horror movie. It certainly worked for Mat, who was the most terrified out of all of us, and who seemed unable quite to believe that these beasts weren’t CGI. The presence of an ‘authentic’ light sabre in the room went some way towards soothing him.

party's over

The bad taste party happened. It seemed to go well. I blundered around in a room full of chavs, giant tampons (well, one), Virgin Marys (everyone thought they were terrorists) and golf victims (it’s in the family), and miraculously I knew them all. I was presented with a TV and video/DVD and was so overcome with gratitude that I turned round and called everyone ‘a bunch of wankers’ (I’ve never been very good at expressing emotions). I sported a tank top, orange-and-black spotted tie (‘washable’, is all the label can find to say for it) and cut-price combats with the ‘damaged goods’ label still attached (‘small hole in cruch (sic) area’, it reads). At least, I was wearing these until Linda, my cousin (once removed) insisted on swapping clothes with me ("Go on, it'll be funny."). One cross-dressing session in the disabled toilet later, I was in a tight pink T-shirt and pink afro. I looked like Jonathan King in his heyday. It seemed not to matter, so I must have lost my inhibitions - OK then, been temporarily relieved of a few of my (many) inhibitions. I hadn’t expected to actually enjoy myself - surely I’d be too on edge - but I was. A feeling of stunned gratitude possessed me, that so many people had made the effort. It’s a shame that the only way I could express it was by threatening everybody with a broken bottle and shouting incomprehensible obscenities. Sorry about that.