Andrew Collinge and me spent the morning doing
podcast 15. He hadn't had coffee or oatmilk or anything as far as I know, but was still quite hyper. I think he is just in love with me and I have this effect on him. I might be wrong. I think it was an OK one. I can't remember much about it now. We make it up as we go along. Apparently Q magazine have given us a 2 star review saying that we sound unrehearsed. That is what we are. How else would we end up talking about mini-socks? The second long conversation about socks that I have had in less than 24 hours. Funny how life works out. I was impressed with my own calves (for once not a bestiality reference) and that is why the photo is a photo of what it is of.
I was hoping to get on with some work in the afternoon, but after sorting out my receipts for tax and trying to get my new sat nav working - I failed and sent it back to amazon. I will buy another one, much to the annoyance of one of my Luddite friends who think it makes me unmanly not to do things the old fashioned way and use maps and take in the countryside. He has a point, but I will only make that step when he goes back to traveling around the country on a stagecoach. If you're going to be a Luddite, do it properly and don't end up like a Conkey (what an obscure reference to
my own work. Oooh look out of the bit that is accidentally almost directly ripped off from the Spinal Tap "This one goes up to 11" bit).
Tonight on the tube back from town, a red haired man with a number two skinhead, wearing a shell suit got on the train on his own. He stood a bit too close to the woman next to me in an almost empty carriage and then started doing chin ups on the hand rail on the roof of the carriage. I am all for trying to keep fit. I myself had done 50 minutes at the gym this evening. But this was one of those moments where something a little bit of the ordinary was going on, but the rest of us knew enough that it was our role to ignore this ostentatious display of Brian Jacks style strength. He was the kind of potentially pumped up and violent man who might see you were taking an interest in what he was doing and then say, "What are you fucking looking at?" before then heavily pummeling your face and body with his thin yet powerful hands.
It was as interesting to watch everyone concentrating on not watching the man as it was to not watch the man for reasons of self-preservation. You see stranger spectacles on London transport, but evenso it was out of the ordinary enough for us all to know that it was a foolish to look at it as it was to attend a gorgon party without a mirror.
He did about a dozen chin ups (I could sense this from my peripheral vision, though I did sneak a couple of surreptitious glances without catching his eye and thus turning to stone). He dropped back down to the floor. I could sense without looking at him that he was proud of what he had done. Not just the unnecessary physical display, but the intimidation of the people around him. He was wiry and skinny and if I had been forced to punch him back in an attempt to defend myself I fancy it would have felt like hitting knotted thick rope, knitted together to make a human. That would probably hurt my hands and burn them, but give this wannabe Superstar no discomfort whatsoever. Never fight a man made out of ropes. This is one of the credos that I live my life by.
He was disappointed that his peculiar behaviour had not attracted one single noticeable stare and after a few seconds leapt back up to do another set of chin ups, without making much of a sound. He was like a real life Travis Bickle. What if he whipped out some guns and started shooting indiscriminately at the norms who he hated and would never understand him. There was something pent up within him and doing chin ups was only doing a tiny amount to release the knotted ball of string that I could now imagine situated in the heart of the gnarly ropes of his body. No human hand could reach between the ropes and pull out the cat's cradle of string that was troubling him. Only he could let it out. By smashing the soft, unropey faces of any middle class comedian who happened to catch his eye or stupidly say, "Wow, you're strong. I like the way you are doing chin ups. It's not an unusual thing to do at all."
I kept quiet.
After the second set of chin ups he just stood, his eyes unfocused on nothing. He may have been drinking, but he wasn't drinking now. Not in Boris Johnson's Brave New World. Maybe the chin ups were just a way of getting through a journey that would usually have been fuelled by super strength lager.
At the next stop, he got off and I was relieved. Though he had done nothing to threaten anyone directly, he had made it clear that he was a potential threat.
I just wished that I was fit enough to emulate him.
I might have muscley calves, but despite years of onanistic exercise of my wrists, I know that I couldn't even manage one chin up. And yet if I had said to the bloke, "My goodness, what a prodigious wanker you must be," it would have been that would have ended up in trouble.
