Only four more days of having this moustache out in public and I fear that the well deserved pummeling that I haven't yet had will come to me in these last few hours.
After recording
Collings and Herrin podcast 108 on my new computer (which doesn't automatically cut off at 1 hour 6 mins and 36 seconds, so you either get some extra or are going to have to cut it off manually yourself) I headed out for a gig in town.
I was pretty exhausted after the long drive down from Darlington, followed by my marathon attempt to convince Collings that he had lost us ten pounds each by giving away one ten pound CD (I think I almost did it) and I wasn't in the mood to do more talking.
A man got on the tube who looked a little wild-eyed and disheveled and created a little frisson of fear amongst the rest of us, by immediately shouting "Kill them!" I gave him a surreptitious once over just to check I wasn't about to be stabbed or blown to kingdom come. But he didn't look like a terrorist. He was wearing a dirty cagoule and carrying a small bag (that couldn't have contained much of a bomb) and hanging from his belt was a red kettle. He was, most likely, a man with mental issues (or maybe just someone who really liked tea) and from the seemingly involuntary utterances he was making I assumed he had some form of Tourette's. But that didn't make things any less tense. He was angry and kept shouting about killing everyone. And he had a kettle on his belt. And I feared that he might see my moustache and it might act like a flame to the moth of his fragile mind and there could be some kind of incident. I covered my face and as he was standing near me and continuing to mutter and flail around I decided to move a little further up the carriage. Just for the sake of avoiding confrontation.
The train stopped in the tunnel and the man got more agitated shouting, "No, no, why are you slowing down. I am in a hurry!" It wasn't nice to be trapped in a metal tube underground with this tightly wound ball of aggression and yet you couldn't blame this man himself. None of this was his fault. He clearly had problems and one would hope that our society would be helping people like him, rather than leaving him to fend for himself in a frustrating world. I was pretty sure by now he was harmless and I felt bad for being intimidated by him. But it didn't stop it being a little bit scary. And how would this man, who had something inside him that was at least expressing the idea that he should kill everyone, feel if he saw Hitler looking back at him.
And was a man walking around with a Hitler moustache in any position to judge someone else for walking around with a kettle clanking on their belt?
He got off at the next stop, after once more expressing his desire to kill everyone. There was a collective sigh of relief from the other passengers and some laughter. Now we were in the light of the station and the doors were open, the snarling man with the kettle on his belt was funny, when moments before in the claustrophobia of the tunnel no one had been laughing.
I hope he got where he was going OK. And I hope he made himself a nice cup of tea.
There's lots of great things about London, but the way we allow people to slip between the cracks isn't one of them.
