A Warm British Greeting.
I walked back from the shops yesterday. I picked up some mushrooms, some chocolate eggs and a bunch of daffodils as I can't be trusted with the shopping. It was, by and large, incident free and I was enjoying the stroll. Three weeks without a drink and the fabled much improved sleep had finally kicked in: ten hours a night of blissful, uninterrupted slumber, my dreams now directed by Cecil B. Demille: monstrous, throbbing psychodramas shattered to atoms even as I reach for the notebook by the bed, all of them Oscar-worthy and tantalisingly out of reach.
I've lost weight. I've been going for long walks every day for the last three weeks. I feel lighter and my limbs feel stronger. I probably look better naked - less like a chest freezer drizzled in honey and rolled on a barbershop floor. This is good.
I made it to the junction and crossed the road. Waiting at the lights was a gigantic new Land Rover with blacked out windows. The driver was a youngish man with a beany hat, a giant red beard and sunglasses. The vehicle was palpitating with sub-bass. As I mounted the pavement I looked over at the waiting traffic and noticed the noisy tank with its hipster driver, his beard the Northern Irish equivalent of a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. He should have been forcibly shorn, of course. If you're driving a £50, 000 car you don't get to look like Yosemite Sam* as well. I wasn't thinking this at the time though. I was feeling very well disposed to the universe. Good on him, I thought. In London that would be a Chelsea Tractor but that car is coming from Newtownards - it could very easily just be a tractor.
As my benign eyes panned along the car something caught my peripheral vision, a sudden snag, something jagged and white against the darkness like a tiny forked lightning. I looked again. The blackened windows had been lowered a crack and through the gap a hand was waving two fingers at me. Some unidentified person in the back of a blacked-out people carrier was flicking me the Vs.
The lights changed and the car drove off, the skeletal antennae still pushed through the window. It was a full-grown man's hand. An adult man was giving me the arsehole's salute as I walked home from the shops clutching some daffs.
The thing that struck me was that it was such discreet, unlikely abuse. It was only by chance that I noticed these two quiet fingers meekly advising me to fuck off. I might just as easily not have seen them and if it wasn't for the driver's beard I definitely wouldn't have. Never trust a man with a beard. It is a fisherman's lure. I wondered how long they would have stuck the horns out of the car window if I hadn't seen them and how many times they had done this. Or was I the only one worth insulting?
And then I wondered whether this sort of thing was happening to me all the time and I just never usually noticed.
You aren't paranoid if they really are calling you a prick from passing cars, after all.
*Stop me if these up to the minute hipster references are getting too much.
I've lost weight. I've been going for long walks every day for the last three weeks. I feel lighter and my limbs feel stronger. I probably look better naked - less like a chest freezer drizzled in honey and rolled on a barbershop floor. This is good.
I made it to the junction and crossed the road. Waiting at the lights was a gigantic new Land Rover with blacked out windows. The driver was a youngish man with a beany hat, a giant red beard and sunglasses. The vehicle was palpitating with sub-bass. As I mounted the pavement I looked over at the waiting traffic and noticed the noisy tank with its hipster driver, his beard the Northern Irish equivalent of a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. He should have been forcibly shorn, of course. If you're driving a £50, 000 car you don't get to look like Yosemite Sam* as well. I wasn't thinking this at the time though. I was feeling very well disposed to the universe. Good on him, I thought. In London that would be a Chelsea Tractor but that car is coming from Newtownards - it could very easily just be a tractor.
As my benign eyes panned along the car something caught my peripheral vision, a sudden snag, something jagged and white against the darkness like a tiny forked lightning. I looked again. The blackened windows had been lowered a crack and through the gap a hand was waving two fingers at me. Some unidentified person in the back of a blacked-out people carrier was flicking me the Vs.
The lights changed and the car drove off, the skeletal antennae still pushed through the window. It was a full-grown man's hand. An adult man was giving me the arsehole's salute as I walked home from the shops clutching some daffs.
The thing that struck me was that it was such discreet, unlikely abuse. It was only by chance that I noticed these two quiet fingers meekly advising me to fuck off. I might just as easily not have seen them and if it wasn't for the driver's beard I definitely wouldn't have. Never trust a man with a beard. It is a fisherman's lure. I wondered how long they would have stuck the horns out of the car window if I hadn't seen them and how many times they had done this. Or was I the only one worth insulting?
And then I wondered whether this sort of thing was happening to me all the time and I just never usually noticed.
You aren't paranoid if they really are calling you a prick from passing cars, after all.
*Stop me if these up to the minute hipster references are getting too much.
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