Monday 8 October 2007

I'm With Stupid

Aaarggh, Monday mornings at Woolwich train station. Nightmare. Woolwich is a nightmare at any time - think Woodstock in CT but with no evident drug trade and just a handful of reported murders as opposed to a multitude - but it goes out of its way to be unpleasant on Monday mornings. There are never enough station staff, the trains are always overpacked ("Move down please, MOVE DOWN!" should become the South Eastern line's motto) and it smells even worse on Mondays than any other day of the week, although how that's possible it's hard to say.

We have long since gotten over the seductive charm of our modern, spacious apartment, and can no longer overlook the fact that the town we live in is an absolute shit hole. Of course, we've known this for ages now. Whenever we're bringing a hapless guest to our house for the first time, we do the stock standard introduction to Woolwich: "Welcome to Woolwich, please excuse the mess / delapidation / lack of middle or upper class people, but wait til you see our flat darling, it's just divine, so worth putting up with the surrounding crap." The fact is, as nice as our apartment may be, we've been deluding ourselves, because last May when we signed our lease for another year, we were too lazy to bother with the rigamarole of moving. How we do regret our apathy of 6 months yonder.

This morning the trains were delayed outside London Bridge for half an hour due to signalling problems. There is nothing I can say about this that has not been lamented about at extraordinary lengths in the British press. The poms just love to alas! about their transport woes. So I got to work late, which was just the start of what has been a slightly irritating day, but for no reason I can put my finger on. So I'll drop it.

Saturday night I went out with my cousins, Chatterbox and ArtyOne. I say went out, but actually we went to Chatterbox's boyfriend's house, where I proceeded to stay perfectly sober in my fledgling programme of Drinking with Moderation and Class. Falling over, crying, permanently injuring myself and blacking out are a thing of the past: I am now a Grown Up and as such will remain either sober or pleasantly tipsy at all times when exposed to alcohol. I have decided to maintain decorum when in the midst of boozing, something which I believe has always eluded me due to a mutated gene: I am not an addict, but I am incapable to getting pissed like a normal, well-adjusted person - it always ends in tears.

So there I was, sitting very high on my horse, surveying the potential for catastrophy around me and smugly congratulating myself on how wise I have become. However, there's always one that has to fly the family flag high, and whilst I know Mini-Me has been doing me proud in CT, it was inevitable that someone had to do their part on this side of the pond too. On this night it was ArtyOne, the one person I know in London who does not regularly drink herself into oblivion. To be fair, she'd barely eaten the entire day (rookie mistake) and when she did get pissed, it was cute and giggly, the kind of pissed I have always wished I could be. If I could get pissed like that, I'd never be sober - what's the point?! Ok, that was a joke, no lectures please.

So I was chatting to her, and we were joined by a complete loser of a guy who we shall from hereon refer to as Major Prick. Major Prick found out we were from Cape Town, and he then proceeded to go into an elaborately pathetic role play where he pretended that he was gay. He seemed to think we might approve, us being from the gay capital of the world and all. I am still at a loss as to what he actually thought he was going to achieve with this charade. I can only conclude that it was a horribly misguided attempt at a pick-up from a guy with the social skills of skunk. ArtyOne was of course going with it, being naturally polite and sweet and now a little tipsy too, so she was amiable and indulgent. I was bored to the point where I was about to chew my own ears off and so I was blatantly rude to Major Prick. I told him I was really bored. I told him the conversation was completely pointless. I told him I couldn't bear to spend another second listening to him blather on like an idiot, and I stalked off to take refuge in the kitchen (only to return seconds later to rescue ArtyOne, who had begun waving frantically and making not so subtle hand gestures that I was to come straight back and rescue her, which I did). Then later, when our paths crossed again, he continued with the little joke, stopping to tell me that he really didn't mean any harm, but he really was gay and what did I have against gay people (he wasn't gay, not even close). I told him he could never be gay because a) he wasn't fashionable enough b) he had the conversational skills of a toad on crack and c) he had awful hair. I was going for the crushing an fly with a boulder effect, but all he looked was a little put out, and told me he was only taking the piss (really? noooo, I never saw that coming). Seriously, I can't remember the last time I was that rude to someone's face and they still didn't get it. Here's your sign.

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