The electronic displays on the motorway were still encouraging us to bin our litter, but no longer informing us that "other people do". I see this as a small victory for Warming Up. I say stuff and the powers-that-be listen. I just hope whoever is responsible has been sacked from the lucrative electronic display writing job. Those guys make millions.
What I enjoy about touring is that the lifestyle is actually very similar to and puts me in direct contact with people of business. Like me they travel on the roads and stay in cheap hotels on their own which means I get a chance to earwig on their conversations and consider how my life would have gone if I had made different choices. In many ways the businessmen made the easy lifestyle choice, going from school or college straight into a job with a wage and the prospect of promotion if they performed in a satisfactory way. Whereas I took a punt on telling cock jokes and hoping someone would pay me, with no guarantees. How those men might have pitied and mocked me back then. But now they would pity me and mock me slightly less, because actually I have done better than expected. Not so well that I am not still in the exact same service stations and hotels as them, but still my own boss and still basically telling the same cock joke. I have managed to do as well as them, without having had to become mature.
Which was very much highlighted by the middle-aged business men I ended up sitting next to at the cafe in the service station this afternoon.
Two balding men sat next to each other, one reading out figures and the other typing them into a spread sheet on their computer. But the figures were all about prices of different types of toilet paper. If I had ended up having this job I would have laughed every time I said 2-ply, especially if that info was then going on to something called a spreadsheet. It wouldn't matter how many times I heard it. I would laugh EVERY TIME. But these men just kept discussing various ply of toilet paper, not only without a smile on their faces, but as if there was NOTHING funny about what they were saying at all. Who should we feel sorrier for? The 44 year old man who still finds toilet paper amusing or the 44 year old men who are so jaded that toilet paper has merely become an ordinary and unamusing item? Is it more immature to laugh at toilet paper or to take it seriously and discuss it with casual indifference?
But it was fascinating to listen in to the conversation. Two more men arrived and a meeting was had about toilet paper (funny) and kitchen roll (not funny). One man made a mistake about how many ply a certain product had and apologised profusely about his error. I was surprised to find out you could get 4-ply toilet paper. How many ply is it possible to have? Will there be an escalation in toilet ply like there was in razor blades? How many ply does the Queen have to clean her bottom? All good questions. All questions that remained unasked by these jaded men. Perhaps when they began in the toilet paper business they were young and spark of humanity and would laugh and make a joke about the spreadsheet spreadsheet. But now they were middle aged and had just accepted their lot and could no longer take any joy from what they're doing.
You might say. "Come on Rich, toilet paper is a serious business and they are just doing their job with dedication and commitment." But I would say, you have fallen into the same trap as them. You have lost sight of why the world is a beautiful place. You are metaphorically sitting in a Costa at a Moto service station discussing toilet paper without even having to suppress a giggle.
I on the other hand am literally sitting in a Costa at a Moto, listening in to a conversation about toilet paper, so I still don't know who is worse.
It wasn't out of any desire to patronise that I commented on this conversation - we all have our jobs. Some of us sell toilet paper, some of us make jokes about shit and we are all laughable to each other. It's really just the odd collision of world's that fascinates me. Despite our different choices we ended up in the same place. Like them I am just a travelling salesman, but my suitcase is full of cock jokes. As always a couple of people on Twitter misconstrued my meaning and told me that not everyone was lucky enough to have the lifestyle I have, which ignored the fact that me and the toilet men pretty much had the same lifestyle and ironically enough patronised me and my job. Like I had somehow been allowed to opt out of having to work for a living and had things easy. This isn't the hardest job in the world, but it's very far away from being an easy one too.
At least the toilet paper men have each other, even if they have lost all their joy. I travel between service station and cheap hotel alone. And unlike them I can do a good job and still get sacked.
Talking of which I discovered tonight that the first series of Richard Herring's Objective is now available to buy on iTunes. No one told me about this and I am sure I will make no money from it, but if you missed the show it's only £1.29 an episode which seems reasonable. You can also get it
on Audio Go and maybe some other places too. Who knows? No one tells me anything about anything.
