Recently I have found myself openly chuckling at strangers' mild misfortunes. It's as much empathy as schadenfreude, but if they were to see me I guess it would read as the latter. Earlier in the week a man on the tube was so engrossed in his book that he failed to spot that he had arrived at this stop until the last moment. He hurriedly leapt to his feet, grabbed his stuff and made for the door, just in time to see the doors close in front of his stupid, book-reading face. The comic timing was perfect and I couldn't stop a small chortle at his expense, luckily behind his back. Now he was going to have to either walk further than he had intended or get a tube back in the other direction. Either way he had just wasted five to ten minutes of his day. Ha ha ha. The fucking idiot.
But it was really a "we've all been there" laugh of recognition. My trip across London had turned into a 3D interactive Michael Mcintyre routine experience. Yet this idiot was giving his comedy gold away for free. Which to be honest is all anyone should be charging for observing stuff that we've all observed. You don't have to pay for this observation. I will charge you for the stuff that you haven't noticed. And then sometimes not even for that.
Today I was in Caffe Nero, writing my blog before heading off to the gym - having plateaued a little with my weight loss programme I am now determined to get back on with it - and there were some men with proper jobs having a meeting at the next table but one. I don't think they knew each other very well, one of them might even have been looking for work off the other, but they had lots of important looking documents in front of them. The lower status man had already arrived a bit flustered and breathless as he was late having gone to the wrong Hammersmith Caffe Nero (it was already like a sit-com - all played out for free again), but then ten minutes into the business discussion he managed to knock his cup of hot chocolate (even his choice of drink was funny), all over the table. The other man grabbed the documents, managing to save most of them, but that only helped make things funnier. No real harm had been done, except to the clumsy man's pride. Again I laughed out loud, but no one was looking at me. They were looking at the desperate attempt to mop up the hot chocolate. Slapstick is nearly always only funny when it happens in real life. It has to be uncontrived and surprising and it usually looks too planned or forced in an actual sitcom. I was most worried that my inability to disguise my amusement might one day lead to me being punched in my stupid face. But once again I was laughing because I have been in similar situations where nerves and cack-handedness have combined to make me look like a prick. I was empathising. But am not sure that an angry man would understand this.
I watched Chilean miners emerging from the dark depths as I ran on the running machine. It would be hard not to be touched by this wonderful story of human endurance and ingenuity or by tiny children being reunited with their fathers after so long. I couldn't help thinking that whoever had the film rights would be secretly hoping for some mishap in the process, not anything too horrible, just enough to add some third reel drama and suspense, but reality doesn't work that way. A horrible part of my brain also cried out for some incident to make this more exciting - reality TV has made us crave extra cruelty and twists to such evictions and after 15 miners had come out the evil part of my brain or the one perhaps that could not distinguish fact from fiction, wanted some variety. Luckily the rest of my brain could shout that unpleasant voice down - it's the same bit of me that wants to push girlfriends into water or punch pregnant women in the stomach. It never wins. Not until I am properly mentally ill.
Most of me was just moved and delighted that these men had got out, ahead of schedule, just in time to tune into Richard Herring's Objective which starts on Thursday at 6.30pm on Radio 4.
Shameful to use the rescue of miners as a personal plug and attempt to raise my own popularity. But I am just doing it to satirise the delighted Chilean president. Yes, that's why.
