Back-to-work black-and-blues

1) There's nothing like falling over really hard to remind you that snow is essentially a novelty weather condition, with a limited window of interest. It is particularly galling when you are wearing an eminently sensible pair of shoes. In a metallic, grip-free Converse, in which you routinely pretend - via your internal monologue - that you are Missy Elliott; in a flimsy ballet pump; in any kind of a heel; you must expect your coccyx to be crushed to dust beneath the combined might of gravity and your own post-Christmas bulk. But in a sturdy, ridge-soled wellington boot? Well, it is extremely hard to endure.

When I got on the tube, half an hour post-tumble, there was a man in my carriage playing with a Rubik's Cube. It made me wonder if I had hit my head when I fell and was now existing in some Ashes To Ashes-style alternate, 80s-set reality. Inevitably, I had my iPod set to Rio, which made it even harder to tell. Although obviously I was listening to an iPod, which was kind of a clue.

2) There's nothing like returning to work after a two-week break to remind you of the inhumanity of commuting.

One morning last week, when I was being Tested by the Tube, I saw a single man's shoe lying on a platform (I mean it was just one shoe, I don't know if he was married). It was a smart and shipshape kind of a shoe. Not like the fallout from someone who might be carrying all their belongings around with them at any one time. If you ask me, it had been left there, Cinders-style, when, at the stroke of 8.30am, someone stepped onto an underground train for the first time this year, leaving behind their smiling, relaxed, relational, casually dressed, Christmas holiday kind of self and turning back into their everyday, anxious, over-adrenalised working self, all dowdy suit and depressing packed lunch.