Assistant Blog

Standing at the bar at my local the other day, I stopped to pat the head of Archie, the pub dog, who reacted, as usual, by going a bit mad and panting enthusiastically. Part of the reason I was paying him so much occasion, on that instance, is that I was aware that the woman standing to my left, drinking her umpteenth drink of the evening, was really sloshed, and putting them away with grim determination. By playing with Archie, perhaps I would avoid a conversation while I awaited my drinks.

Not so.

“He’s a nice dog”, my bar companion said.

I nodded. “He is”.

“Is he yours?”

“No”.

Something about the way she received this information made me understand her to have taken my clearly enunciated ‘no’ as a ‘yes’.

She mulled it over. “How old is he?”

“I don’t know”, I said, as firmly and clearly as I could.

She looked surprised. She looked at me, and at the dog, then back at me again.

“Ten!?”, she said, clearly perplexed that he did not look it.

I had to get some cash out last night and stood, bloody cold, outside the Co-op in Seven Dials waiting for my turn at the cash machine. In front of me stood a kid, perhaps twenty years old, who was pulling hard on a cigarette and kept glancing back towards me as he used the machine. I rocked back bored on my heels and tried to take my mind off the cold by concentrating on the music on my iPod. Then I noticed him saying something to me.

“Sorry mate?”, I said, removing my headphones.

He looked at me crossly. “I said do you wanna stand any closer?” he hissed.

I looked at him, suddenly aware that he had a shaven head, clenched fists and a tough, angry little face. He could quiet easily, of course, have beaten me up, and I wondered for a moment if that was a possibility. I opened my mouth to apologise for looking over his shoulder, despite the fact that I hadn’t been.

And then I laughed at him in a really condescending manner.

“I don’t wanna know your PIN number, mate”, I said, still laughing. He glared at me and called me a tosser. And oddly, I just chuckled and returned to my iPod. He narrowed his eyes at me, and walked off.

I say this only because I don’t normally have a reputation for facing down trouble. Ooh.

I went down to the doctor’s surgery in Kemptown after work today and got the bus back up to Seven Dials. As I sat down upstairs I found myself behind a woman with two young kids, girls of around seven or eight, I guess.

Girl A: I used to have a parrot!
Girl B: A carrot?
Girl A: A parrot. I kept it in a cage.
Girl B: What happened to it?
Girl A: It escaped.
Girl B: Was it an english parrot?
Girl A: It came from abroad but I kept it here. My mum didn’t know I had it. When she came in the bedroom I put it in a box.
Girl B: Didn’t she hear it talking?
Girl A: No, because I put lots of boxes on it.
Girl B: (looks sceptical)
Girl A: I went into the garden and caught 21 worms and put them in a mug and brought them in and then she ate them all and then went outside and tried to find some more.
Girl B: (looks horrified)
Girl A: This morning I trod in the cat food and didn’t wipe it off my shoe.

At this point, with a great deal of regret, I had to disembark.

Waiting for my train to be announced at Brighton station this morning, I note that two young families are standing nearby, two mothers and their respective children, one boy, one girl. The children are quiet, inspecting each other suspiciously. But one is more reluctant to speak than the other. One of the mothers moves off to WH Smith to get a paper.

The boy addresses the little girl. “I’m eight. How old are you?”

She greets his question will shy silence.

“You’re eight too, I can tell”, he says.

The mother intervenes. “Oh no”, she says, “she’s not even six yet”.

The boy furrows his brow.

“She looks eight”, he muses. “How old is she, then?”

“She’s five”.

At this point the little girl, by now looking thoroughly mortified, edges around the back of her mother, hiding. But the boy peers round.

“Five?”, he repeats, as if thinking about this for a moment.

“Have you got a boyfriend?”, he asks.

Because I fly about for work every now and again, I’m now so familiar with the procedure for checking in and passing security at airports that it’s a quick and painless procedure. So long as those in front of me are similarly savvy.

Just now I was held up coming through the baggage check system because a woman in front of me was repeatedly setting off the alarm. She must have been seventy years old, an aged and rather befuddled woman dressed, bizarrely, like a gereatric air hostess. Her husband stood by, his face twitching in annoyance. He was wearing an electric blue boating blazer. She had several big plasters on her arm and vivid brusing to her face and chest. It was a strange sight.

“Are you wearing jewellery, madam?”, she was asked.

“Fine welcome for a foreigner”, she replied, and obligingly removed about a ton of heavy gold jewellery, stepping back through the machine. It buzzed again.

Several further permutations of jewellery removal were then performed, over the course of ten minutes, until the woman was at last free of her hefty gold burden and, presumably, fine to go through. Not that the machine would stop buzzing. Her husband’s irritation seemed to have been replaced by a look of weary familiarity.

“Do you have any metal plates or medical pins?”, she was asked. She stuck her chin out and demurred.

I stood shuffling from shoeless foot to shoeless foot, wondering what would happen. There seemed no way through. Eventually a portable gizmo was brought out and the problem was, hilariously, traced to her, erm, suspender belt.

I darted through security without a hitch. Waiting for my plane now. Whee.

Overheard conversation in the pub today:

Man in stripey jumper, spotting a friend with a toddler arrive at the bar: Oh hello, how’s it going?
Man with toddler: Oh, good, thanks – lovely weather. Have you met my youngest?
Man in stripey jumper: No, hello. I’ve got two of my own coming shortly.
Man with toddler: No, really!? Congratulations. Two, you say?
Stripey jumper: Yes. Due in about sixteen weeks.
Toddler man: Gosh. Twins?
Stripey jumper: No. (beat) Different mothers.

He was joking of course, and several people at the bar laughed. Good stuff.

I’ve blogged before about the awkwardness of barbershop conversations. This time, sat waiting for my turn, I realised there’d be no escaping – there were three hairdressers, two women, broad and warm brummies, and a young Irish boy with a straightened mullet. They were putting on a real performance for their customers. I subtly eyed them, hoping I got the boy, who seemed a little quieter, and not the louder of the two woman who it seemed to me was talking so much – each word requiring the appopriate gesticulation – that she hardly ever seemed to be cutting hair, and the louder she got the more likely I considered it that she would put the client’s eye out. She finished first and called me over.

“Just a trim, please”, I said, sitting down. “Shorter at the back and tidy up the sides. You can pretty much leave the top as it is”.
“So what do you”, she said, ignoring me, “think about, y’know, supernatural stuff – do you believe in it?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer.
“Kathy” – she pointed at her colleague, “says that if you leave your front gate open you’re actually inviting evil spirits in!”.

I started to reply, but she continued. “Kathy, is it your front gate or your back gate? Only I haven’t got a front gate!”
“It’s the front gate, I think”, Kathy called over, “but I think either works”.

“Leave both open and maybe the evil spirits will just pass straight through”, I suggested.
“So. What do you want?”, she asked. “Just a trim?”.

“I’m a bit psychic, though”, she explained, once she’d started a little casual cutting.
“Hmm-mm”, I half-replied.
“There are some things I just know. I dreamed that Ellie – she works at the other shop – was really fat. And then a week later she told me she was pregnant. You do get some weird co-incidences, don’t you? How else would you explain them?”
“Well, we think about other people all the time, don’t we”, I replied. “It would be a bit strange if there were never any coincidences at all. Sooner or later you’ll happen to be thinking about someone who will happen to call you a moment letter. But that’s bound to happen occasionally. It doesn’t have to be paranormal”.

She pointed the sharpened point of the scissors at me, threateningly. “My little brother is 14, right, and I found out that he’s been messing around with a ouija board! I told him, you’re mad, don’t you ever do that again! You’re messing with forces way beyond your control”.
“When I used to play with a ouija board with my friends”, I told her, “we all denied moving the coin around ourselves. Much later I asked a couple of my friends whether either of them had actually moved it. Oh yes, they both said. I’d moved it too. We still allowed ourselves to get scared though”.

“A gypsy woman came in here a while ago. And I could tell that she couldn’t read me. But then my mum told me that there’s gypsy blood in me. Romany gypsy, apparently. Are they the ones with the crystal balls and headscarves?”, she asked.
“Yes, I think so”.
“So where would that be from?”
“Eastern European I suppose. Is it not just Romania?”.
She shrugged, excited. “Maybe it is, yeah. Romany gypsy”.

This was the best one.

“You do get poltergeists too, don’t you”, she said.
I looked non-commital.
“Once I was having dinner with my mum and dad, and my stereo suddenly came on upstairs, all on its own. I just heard this strange noise, this weird sound followed by a bassline – dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur DUR DUR DUR. ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ by the Stone Roses. Trying to speak to me, see. Cause that’s not the first song on that album is it?”
Yes, it is.

“No”, I said, “I don’t think so”.
“Exactly”.
“At least your poltergeist has good taste”, I offered.
“That’s exactly what I said”.

The haircut cost eleven pounds and I left a big tip – amazing value.