Testing, testing...

Eagle-eyed readers will have noted from a previous post that I had a date with gymnastics last week.

Not competing, of course, although my floor routine to (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman is quite something, particularly the star-jump-into-forward-roll sequence, which is so spectacular I essentially repeat it for the duration of the programme. My marks for difficulty are, in general, heavily outweighed by those for performance, but what performance! If your living room carpet is vast enough, I'd be more than willing to pop over and demonstrate. Please ensure I cannot bump my head on the coffee table or similar. I am extremely litigious.

No, this was, of course, one of the Olympic test events at the North Greenwich Arena. Not the O2 Arena. Oh no. The Olympics does not recognise O2 as a valid sponsor. If you say the words O2 repeatedly in the presence of Lord Coe or one of his LOCOG droids, they spin round on the spot as smoke and springs are propelled from their featureless middles while they emit the words 'Happy Meal! Happy Meal!' at ever-increasing pitch and volume until your ears bleed.

Anyway, look, it's a bit like being at the Olympics but with far less people there, they're presumably hoping.

Aren't you wildy excited? Luckily, LOGOC have sought to quell your rabid enthusiasm by lighting the arena so brightly as to remind one of a friend's brand-new kitchen extension, or some kind of deeply unethical laboratory, thus creating all the atmosphere associated with the latter.

Here you can see the competitors for the rings event lining up, along with the lady who leads them on their march into the arena and carries a sign bearing the name of the event. 

Perhaps you think that this lady and her sign look a little blandly presented, and that this is an effect caused by my poor photography skills or the bleachingly harsh lighting? Well, one out of two ain't bad, as Meatloaf initially wrote, before a surer grasp of fractions prompted a rewrite. My photography is, on this rare occasion, not to blame.

No one is suggesting any more money than is strictly necessary should be spent on these events; no one is suggesting this lady should wear a spangly leotard and feather headdress and write out the name of the event in the air with burning sparklers as she enters on stilts, but perhaps we could have aimed a little higher than the look of a volunteer who didn't have time to change her clothes after finishing her temping job at HSBC (luckily she'd found time to print out the signs – Times Roman, A4 – during her lunch-hour).

However, it wasn't entirely a razzamatazz vacuum. There was a brief moment of magic as the gymnasts marched on to music that was Star Wars-esque – or, perhaps, actually from Star Wars. I'm not big on the sci-fi classics. Iconic, rousing theme music soundtracking the parades and presentations at the Games? This is an idea I could get behind, but John Williams is American. We need something resolutely British. Perhaps the estate of the late Ronnie Hazlehurst could licence a reworking of the Are You Being Served? theme tune to introduce all the apparatus as the gymnasts walk on ('Beam, floor and pommel horse; vault and uneven bars; coming up!')

All this would have been entirely lost on the lady sitting two seats away from me, however, who had apparently seen the evening as an opportunity to catch up on her emails. We're all busy people, after all.

Luckily, when the national anthems were being played for the victors, she did have the good grace to stand up and respectfully lower the lid of her laptop slightly. 

Perhaps she and her partner were working on a modern art project where they act out scenes from disappointing romcoms in public places. Here, of course, they are giving their take on the sequence from the US Fever Pitch remake The Perfect Catch, where Drew Barrymore's character takes her laptop to the Red Sox game and, in failing to focus on the game, ends up knocked out by a flying baseball. This, I realise, is unlikely to happen in artistic gymnastics, but at the rhythmic disciplines (taking place on another evening) my seat-neighbour could well have been concussed by a club thrown with impressive strength but sub-standard levels of accuracy. I must confess I would have been sad to miss that.

Maybe she was just bored. Let me tell you, if anyone sitting next to me at the Actual Olympics is doing their admin instead of paying full attention, I am going to KICK OFF.

In other gymnastics news, I have worked out how to make my fortune, and that is by creating a leotard that does not immediately seek out the innermost reaches of one's backside. 

Also, I could totally do this:

I just choose not to.

Things I meant to post last week

Early last week, I was roused from my commuter-stupor when I saw a man who I was convinced played Danny Kendal in Grange Hill in the 80s. We got off the same train and I was transfixed by his head-down, purposefully shuffling gait – ambling down platform 14 at London Bridge station just as he used to turn his back on the school building and make for the gates, with the bellow of Mr Bronson ringing in his ears.
I think it's clear from this picture that it is DEFINITELY him – it's there in his thick black hair and diminutive stature. It's my considered opinion that he probably now works as a graphic designer or web developer. This is evinced by 1) leather elbow patches on a vintage-look jacket and 2) beard.

Similarly, when I first moved to London, and used to walk the [middle class bit of the] mean streets of Camberwell, I would, on occasion, see 'Bullet' Baxter. I'm sure that if I bumped into Johnny Depp buying Weetabix in the nearest Sainsbury's Local, it could not come close to eclipsing my excitement at these two fictional eccentrics from my childhood apparently walking their path out of my television 25 years ago, and all the way into my postcode.

It probably wasn't him.

Like many of our peers, my friends and I spent a significant portion of last week engaged in lengthy and involved discussion about whether we would attempt to go to see the newly reformed Stone Roses play next summer. There is no easy segue or close link between Danny Kendal and the Stone Roses, apart from, perhaps, that distinctive, nonchalant walk. A swagger in the case of Brown and co. A few daily portions of fruit and vegetables short of a swagger for Kendal.

Naturally, I have heard all the stories about Ian Brown's unconventionally impressive live vocals. I have heard Ian Brown's unconventionally impressive live vocals, but on that occasion, I had carefully set my expectations several legions below neutral, which enabled me to be pleasantly surprised. I have also read about the financial motivations that may be behind the Roses' new-found zeal for band life.

In spite of all this, there I was, sitting at my desk, excitement creeping all over every part of me, waiting for the news of the reunion press conference to break online, wondering if the Stone Roses would even turn up – just as, in 1995, I'd wondered if they'd even turn up at the Leeds Town & Country Club. They did. Grown men cried. In a good way.

But here's what I think I would really like to be doing when the Stone Roses take to the stage at Heaton Park next June. I would like to be in a friend's garden, staging 'the Headphone Roses', a glorified indie disco, listened to individually on earphones, because obviously we don't want to upset the neighbours, I mean we sorted the problem with the hedge out so amicably it seems like suicide to rock the boat.

It can't be my garden, because I don't have a garden. I have a flat roof outside my kitchen window. This would be fine if we kept the numbers right down, but even so, I don't imagine my downstairs neighbour would be too thrilled as we came crashing through her ceiling within the first four bars of I Am The Resurrection. There would be a 'support act' of course – a carefully compiled turn-of-the-90s indie playlist – followed by the playing in full of that golden first Stone Roses album, and there will be lots of dancing, because there will be room for lots of dancing, what with there not being 49,970 other people invading your personal space.

There would be cold beer at sensible, supermarket prices and upmarket organic red wine and barbecued burgers – we could, of course, undercook them slightly for an exciting hit of festival-food jeopardy. But in reality, of course they'd be reassuringly well done and served with that Waitrose celeriac remoulade that I really like. There would be a toilet that is clean, dry, fragrant, fully functioning and just a matter of feet away, so you would not hear the faint strains of one of your favourite songs drifting through the evening air as you exit a Portaloo and realise it will be over by the time you have legged it all the way back to your mates in the crowd, because the band has come on earlier than billed. YES JARVIS COCKER, I AM TALKING TO YOU.

I would perhaps scatter a carpet of half-eaten noodles and cracked plastic pint glasses all over the lawn for authenticity and 'colour'. But crucially, there would be NO DICKS THERE. And here I should make it clear that I could be talking about the crowd or the band. Only people whose occasional dickishness you are familiar with, and tolerant of – which is to say, your close friends and family – are allowed. There would be licensed taxis home, at a time that is later than your normal bedtime, but not, like, that late. We've all got DIY to do in the morning. No one will have to spend their journey home wedged in the corner of a surely-illegally-overcrowded bus or train carriage hoping that no one vomits on them, missing their stop because they are physically hemmed in by a league of bodies sweating cider.

The undoubted success of the night will lead to a franchise of similar 'music-listening experience' events, and eventually we will be able to eradicate the whole wretched business of live music altogether, and all the bad smells, discomfort and idiots that come with it. Jean-Paul Sartre said 'Hell is other people.' To that I say, 'Bonjour Jean. Je pense que nous devrions être amis. Voulez-vous venir à la maison de mon ami et écouter les Stone Roses?'

Who's in?

These Moments Shape Your Life, Is What I'm Saying

I'd like to address this post to the primary school teacher I saw at London Bridge station at about 9.45am a couple of days ago, who was attempting to wrangle her class into an orderly crocodile of prearranged pairs.

Hello, 'Miss'. Congratulations on your 'teacher' voice. Wow. Piercing is just one of the words I could use to describe it. This is just a personal opinion of course, but I don't think you should shout at your group of pupils, loud enough so that the whole platform can hear, if not the majority of south-east London: 'OH YES, REBECCA IS THE ODD ONE OUT, ISN'T SHE?! SHE'S MISS WHEATLEY'S PARTNER.'

I just feel like you could mess someone up that way.

(To Rebecca: you won't always have to be partners with Miss Wheatley. Although, realistically, it is a possibility. I wouldn't want to lead you on in that respect.)

The indignity of it all

Let me make this clear at the start. I'm no animal lover. No vegetarian. I may be hypocritically squeamish about tongues and trotters, but I'm rarely shy when they're handing out the breaded veal. Since being bitten by a Yorkshire terrier as a small child, I dislike dogs, to the extent where I have become physically allergic to them. Admittedly, most days I blame that on over-ingestion of antibiotics as a child (medical ratification and follow-up article in The Lancet pending), but the fact remains I am still profoundly canine-averse. I start emitting anxious squeaks should anyone incite me to heartily pat a horse during a trip to the countryside.

But even from that hostile starting position, I was perturbed to see this information posted on the glass wall of the intensive care unit at the New England Aquarium.


Clearly there is no vetinarian equivalent of the hypocratic oath.

One frail turtle has had his dirty washing well and truly hung out in public, in some macrocosmic version of being examined by a doctor in front of an audience of student medics. Only instead of, say, four weary junior doctors standing around staring at your physical vulnerabilities, there are thousands of visitors from all over the world, taking pictures of them, which they will then take home and publish on the internet to their literally tens of readers.

I can't decide whether it is better or worse that the patient answers to a number rather than a name. It offers a kind of anonymity of course - as much as you can find when you're swimming around in a transparent tank right under your medical records. But still, I keep thinking about that turtle saying to himself, 'If I'm going to die here, I want someone to call me Michael just one more time before I go.'

I'm guessing.

I can't quite bear the diagnosis of 'flipper lameness'. It makes me think of physically ungifted children struggling through school sports lessons, or tottering old people edging their way down the bus, looking hopefully at blank-eyed youths with Walkmans (Walkmen?) occupying the priority seats. I murmur a constant prayer that Michael isn't made to perform his physiotherapy as some kind of sideshow for visitors, like the reptilian Esther Williams.

I shudder at the notion of a similar report on my physical wellbeing getting a public showcase. 'Borderline verrucca. No discernible stomach muscles. Recurrent sniffling. Scaly dry skin (possible reptile cross-species?).'

At least I didn't take a prying picture of the patient.


Oops.

Sorry, but the press never sleeps. Still, you will be relieved to see I've attempted to protect his anonymity, in my own small way.

Field music

I have been on a field trip this weekend, deep in Hyde Park, under the al fresco celebrity patronage of Stevie Wonder (Saturday) and Paul McCartney (Sunday). It was extremely kind of both these very busy men to arrange large-scale concerts purely to facilitate my work.

Here I have recorded my findings.

WARNING! Contains Level 2 swearing, specifically 'piss', 'twat' and 'wanker'.

1) A surprising number of women have undertaken the formidable fashion challenge of the jumpsuit. Well done, you plucky number. Apologies for expecting you, any minute, to break into some belly-dancing evening class dance-of-the-veils (for the strapless voluminous versions) or inhale sharply through your teeth and assert that you won't be able to come back and finish the job for more than a week as these boilers are notoriously tricky to source parts for (for the rest). I'm not very 'fashion' these days. (You see how I have carefully seeded the wholly erroneous impression that I once was. Smoke and mirrors, my friends, smoke and mirrors.)

2) The mass uptake of maxi dresses has become an epidemic. I'm yet to be struck down with total conviction, despite having bought one from New Look recently to wear to a wedding on Saturday, at which I anticipate there will be at least two other women in the same dress, all much, much more tanned than me. Not such an achievement since I am definitively the whitest woman in Europe, and thus, most likely, the world. The lure of the maxi would appear to be that it hides the now proverbial multitude of sins, but I fear that for all except the most willowy, it makes you look like you are all sin, giving the effect, from the neck down, of a Dalek in a valance.

3) When it comes to sun cream, more would appear to be more.

4) Sweet, sweet wanker-related schadenfreude is an intoxicating drug. Example: mouthy, beer-and-sunshine-marinated moron, balding, mid 30s – let's call him Pork Pie Hat Twat – attempting to persuade a much younger, cooler bloke to share his spliff (my lexicon of drug words is approximately at the level of Cliff Richard, probably), because we're alike, you and me, even though you are much younger and better-looking. I get you, you get me, yeah? We're just vibing off each other. My weed is your weed. Even though this is mostly your weed. We're like brothers, right? And no one's gonna stop us smoking a very small amount of soft drugs right in the middle of a 50,000 crowd of people and thus far from the eyes of any kind of authority whatsoever.

It has come to my attention through my recent concert-going history that the unsociable troublemakers at such events - testing the staff, vexing their meeker counterparts in the audience – are not 17-year-kids attempting to shrug off authority pre-adulthood, but despo 35-year-olds trying to assert that even though they now have a middle-management job at HSBC, a gold membership at Fitness First and a gas barbecue, they are STILL PRETTY REBELLIOUS. YEAHH! I'M TOTALLY STANDING ON MY SEAT, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE BEEN TOLD TO GET DOWN BY A SECURITY GUARD! SCREW YOU, 'THE MAN'! I AM INVINCIBLE!

Urgh.

Anyway, Pork Pie Hat Twat's phoney, stoney bonhomie was slapped down with such a gratifying look of 'Seriously, mate. Not. Cool,' by the younger man smoking, it was a privilege to witness it. There followed a short but embarrassing scene of begging which was dealt with mercifully swiftly.

(By the way, Pork Pie Hat Twat, Sainsbury's called. That white raffia trilby you're wearing belongs strictly behind their deli counter, on the head of someone who slices up finest breaded ham, and occasionally their own digits, for a living.)

5. In happier findings, it has now been proved that it is possible for me to emerge from a gig in Hyde Park without someone else's piss on my feet. At an REM gig a few years ago, in the so-called Golden Circle (sometimes the jokes don't even need writing), the man next to me pissed on the ground twice, showering my toes in splashback. On Saturday, Pork Pie Hat Twat's friend pissed in an empty beer bottle in front of me, set it down on the floor, and almost immediately knocked it over doing the type of dancing favoured by overweight men at Oasis concerts, sending a shallow tide of human waste towards my sandals. Luckily, this kind of thing doesn't seem to happen at a Paul McCartney concert. Some members of the audience would probably rather be voluntarily catheterised than have to urinate in a public place, or, in some cases, even use a Portaloo.

6) If you are a blind 60-year-old soul-funk pioneer, derided for some saccharinely commercial hits later on in your career, and now filling out those spangly, slightly tribal smocks a little more than you used to, I would suggest that performing an elaborate keytar solo lying down on the floor of the stage, during the very first number of your set, is a pretty cool way to prove that you've Still Got It.

7) All the Autumn Sunset hair dye and Frog Choruses in the world could not stop me loving Paul McCartney. Nor any amount of 'groovy' dad-banter:

'Who's ready to have some rocking fun tonight?'

Answer: ME.

In which I wonder if I should just loosen the f**k up

As I was leaving work one day last week, I stopped off at the ladies'. There, in front of the communal mirror, a woman in a sleeveless dress was shaving her armpits with a Bic razor.

And what's wrong with that?

That's not a rhetorical question.

I do feel there's something wrong with that but a) I'm not sure what and b) does anyone else?

And what about this: In the crazy-hot summer of 2006 (as the digital memory-stick versions of ourselves will refer to it in the millennia to come), I similarly stopped off at the ladies' at the end of the day, and when I came out of the cubicle I was confronted by a woman stripped down to her bra (fully clothed from the waist down, I should stress) having a very thorough top-half wash over the basin.

(Perhaps the bottom half followed – I didn't linger to see).

She was a slightly older lady. You are right, this is of no relevance whatsoever, except there was a certain mighty, matronly bulk to her bra, and the considerable load it was bearing, that made me scared to reach across her towards the soap for fear of an accidental harassment charge.

When I saw her there, I emitted an inadvertent and high-pitched 'Oop!', my generic call of surprise/clumsiness/exertion (it is somewhere between 'Ooh!' and 'Oops!' and helpfully serves as either) at the unexpected MIDDLE-AGED BOSOM SEMI-REVEAL! that confronted me.

She, meanwhile, was entirely at ease. In fact, I would say she was revelling in the situation, positively daring me to blanche at her lack of inhibition.

'Don't mind me!' she beamed.

I did a bit.

If you want the truth, I'm always slightly intimidated by a very public groomer, a mirror moth – even if it's not depilation or partial nudity, but just a fairly normal amount of make-up. While it's likely that the opposite is true, I always divine a terrifying confidence about them. And – as in this case – they seem to feed off my timidity and slightly apologetic lack of grooming in order to become bolder and prouder.

I am 36, and I think I am so independent, so on top of it, with my work-life balance and my mortgage for one. But still. Seeing another woman in the throes of an elaborate make-up routine still makes me feel about seven.

It is an everyday anxiety that I will go the toilet at the end of the working day (I am a creature of habit, this much is clear) and there will be a group of advertising types in full preen, colonising the basin area like cockatoos spread out along a branch. You can usually sense this before you walk in, from the exotic scents that have seeped out under the door and into the corridor. For at least one reason, I take a deep breath before I go in.

Then I'll push open the door, and dive into a cubicle and, when I emerge, I have to insinuate myself – with my bare face and scuffed-up student-wardrobe jeans – among them, to perform something as mundane and totally square as washing my hands. 'Sorry... can I just... oop!... get some soap... thanks... sorry....' They will grudgingly slouch to one side slightly, to permit my path to dull old hygiene. There will most likely be some high-budget handbag cast down on the flat space between the sinks, its open mouth leering at me, showing off a threatening set of hair straighteners, cans and compacts inside. This means I have to rinse in the smallest, carefulest way possible, for fear of shaking water onto the uber-bag and provoking some screech of 'WATCH IT, SPLASHY! THIS IS MIU MIU!'

It's worse if I am forced to carry out some token making up myself. While in all likelihood they couldn't care less and are consumed thoroughly by the serious business of bronzer, I am crippled by performance anxiety as I put in my contact lenses, and feel scrutinised as I attempt to fake some colour in my cheeks. I blush (that, right there, is an inadvertent pun) to phantom sneers of: 'Oh! You're using that? On there? And you think that looks OK, do you?'

If there was hair to be removed, I would be undertaking that task in the murky depths of a closed-door cubicle, risking bloodshed and a crick in the neck, rather than publicly hoisting my armpit heavenwards for anyone to interject with 'You've missed a bit... there... down your arm.'

I'm not sure what the corresponding situation would be, were I a man. Perhaps a highly ostentatious changing-room towelling-down, post-shower. More likely, an elaborate hair-product ritual. I'm not sure a straight-forward Remington in front of the mirror of the gents' is the same. Although, if I were a bloke, doubtless I would still find a way to be intimidated by that, projecting a monologue out of the suave mouth of Mr Shaving that was principally: 'Can you guys believe I am having to do this AGAIN? God, it is a nightmare being so hirsute and so fecund and so incredibly made of undiluted MALENESS.'

What is the message here? I don't know. And that's a problem, because I'd quite like to go to bed. But let me refer you to the title of this post.

Loosen up, Jones, won't you?

Dealbreakers

Maybe there are certain traits that you so detest in other people that you simply cannot stand anyone in possession of them, even if that person is otherwise pretty much perfect. Maybe it's their political leaning. Maybe it's their starsign. Maybe it's their fondness for, say, Bryan Adams. (I love Bryan Adams. I'm sorry if that means it's the end for us.) Maybe it's someone who takes their unopened wine home again after a party.

At the weekend I discovered a new one for my own dossier of dealbreakers. Someone who haggles in a charity shop.

Here is the scene that played out across the glass-topped counter:

Softly spoken charity shop worker: That will be £15.97 please.

Angry joyless customer: So we'll call it £15 then, yeah?

SSCSW: No, it's £15.97.

AJC: Yeah, so we'll just round it down to £15, shall we?

SSCSW: No, it's £15.97. It's for charity.

AJC: [Now particularly angry and joyless] YOUR ATTITUDE STINKS.

I gave him the Jones Family Withering Look. It didn't really help.

Stupid posh men

Hello, middle-aged man in navy blazer and pinstriped shirt, standing behind me at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre bar on Friday night, thrusting your vile self forwards by shoulder-barging my mother, 65, out of the way, then lunging your arm over my shoulder and waving your £20 note across my face in an attempt to be served before me, even though I had been standing there an awful lot longer, as evidenced by the fact that I was actually in front of you. Yes, you, calling for the bartender's attention as though she was some deliquent canine. I never knew it was possible to be simultaneously summoning and dismissive. I imagine this to be a source of pride to you.

Hello, different middle-aged man in blazer and pinstriped shirt, same repulsive air of superiority and entitlement, two bouffy-haired, Fauntleroy-style sons in tow, at the door of the Albert Hall on Saturday night, ignoring the queue of rain-blasted people waiting patiently to have their tickets checked, and striding straight to its head. Yes, you, talking loudly to the increasingly flustered but admirably principled usher about how your wife is ONE OF THE SINGERS tonight and you HAVE TO get to Box 3, then responding to their meek and very polite request that you go to the appropriate entrance for that box, or indeed the stage door, with an immediate demand to SEE THE MANAGER.

You are both bastards.

In which I realise I should basically just stay at home all the time

Last week I was forced to address my increasing intolerance of anyone who is not a member of my immediate family or one of my close friends, particularly when those people surround me in a confined space. It is all part of my accelerating slalom towards middle-aged cantankery.

I went to see Fleet Foxes at the Camden Roundhouse. They were very good. They arrived in North London garlanded in not just a lot of facial hair, but also all manner of album-of-the-year plaudits. Consequently, it was very busy. The Roundhouse was full of beards, glasses, people who looked like they could do with three weeks in a tropical climate, woman in clothes that I either own or have tried on in a variety of high-street stores and rejected as being too me. Basically, these were my people. But still I wanted to kill most of them. 

This was on account of their committing against me a number of crimes of my own designation. The first is standing too closely in front of me, so I have to spend the evening leaning back at an angle of 30 degrees. I understand we all have to share an inadequate space, but still, back off. Or, in fact, forward off. Worse still is when I have become slightly warm and flustered through idiot proximity, and a woman (or a man, I am an equal opportunities fascist) with long hair that she simply must toss around three times a minute, flicks her ill-conditioned hair so it sticks to my bare arm. There are no words poisonous enough to describe how I hate this. Were it not for the fact that I get claustrophobic in a polo neck, this alone would make me want to go everywhere in some kind of spacesuit, or alternatively live in a bubble, like the man in Northern Exposure who was played by Dr Greene from ER.

I will gloss over the low-level chatting during quiet moments, and the couple who must always stand in front of me in a permanent lip-locked embrace, bending their blissful heads together in a way that utterly blocks my view. Let's move on to the distracting light show happening all around me, created by people attempting to take pictures on their mobile phones – pictures that any idiot can see (particularly the idiots in the 10 rows behind them who are having their view obscured) are going to be shit. 

Were I not consumed with paralysing emotional repression, I would be screeching over the hapless photographer's shoulder, 'YEAH, AS IF THAT'S GOING TO WORK!' 

And also 'DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT IS GOING TO MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU IN SIX MONTHS' TIME? LOOK AT IT! IT'S JUST A LOAD OF USELESS BLOBS.'

I've been there myself, or course. I have boxes and boxes of blurry photos, featuring tiny collections of pixels who may or not be The White Stripes at Brixton Academy. Or Eminem at the Carling Weekend in Leeds – who, for all I can prove now, could be anyone dressed in white with short blonde hair. Andrew Flintoff, Anthea Turner... 

And look, here's Take That at the Milton Keynes Bowl on a glorious summer's evening. Probably.

You see? Useless. Don't bother. Just stop.

Really, if everyone could just do what I wanted all the time, I think the world would get along famously.

Train manners

I was on the train to work this morning, and we had reached the stage of the journey when more people were getting off than getting on. And as I began to enjoy the sense of calm that was descending on the carriage, I became aware of a repetitive, snip-snipping noise over my shoulder.

When I turned around, I saw that a perfectly respectable-looking woman (slightly reminiscent of Alison Steadman, wearing a smart red coat and glasses) had taken out some nail clippers and was very loudly cutting her fingernails. Clippety-clip, she went, as she propelled pieces of her dead tissue all over the train carriage.

I'm always surprised by the lack of inhibition displayed by my fellow commuters. Of course, it's not unusual to sit next to someone who is energetically applying foundation, or painting their nails and subjecting the rest of their carriage to the heady smell of solvents. But on one occasion, I sat opposite a woman who took out a pair of tweezers and began plucking hairs from her upper lip, while three blobs of eye-catching, luminous white spot cream worked their magic elsewhere on her face. Some part of me is admiring of anyone who can be so thoroughly unselfconscious and immune to the raised eyebrows of those around them. But there is no part of me at all that would be admiring if a shard of someone else's fingernail should land in my cardboard cup of coffee. Badly done, pseudo Steadman.

Pinpricks Of Depression In An Otherwise Lovely Weekend

1) The Aisle Of Macabre Sculpture in TK Maxx, Lewisham. This is not a feature that is particular to Lewisham. It is in the mission statement of every branch of TK Maxx to achieve an Aisle Of Macabre Sculpture – grimacing cats, bodies entwined with a gloomy lack of eroticism and the like. But Lewisham trumped them all this weekend, with the Severed Otter's Head.

It is a curious piece of artistry. The otter seems to me a lovable breed. Who would revel in the concept of its decapitation heartily enough to pop this proudly on their mantelpiece? Perhaps only the world's least convincing hunter. 'Well, modesty aside, that one put up quite the fight, let me tell you. We wrestled on the river bank until I proved its master. Then I had its head glazed and jet marbles inserted in its eye sockets, the better to preserve my spoils. And now every visitor to my three-bedroom semi is transfixed by this trophy, begging me to tell just one more time the story of how I tamed the beast of the estuary. It is indeed truly the skill of the glazer to make it look precisely like a piece of roughly hewn china tat.'

Let us also pause a moment to reflect on how dirty the shelves of Lewisham TK Maxx are.

2) Dropped Soft Toy. Traditionally, this species is seen propped up on a fence or gatepost by a good samaritan who refuses to say die, hauled onto woolly tiptoes to catch the eye of its bereaved owner in case he should return to the scene to search for his fallen comrade. But this was an example for the eco-conscious 00s, captured lying prone in juxtaposition with a brown, garden waste recycling wheelie bin.

3) The man sitting next to me at Daniel Kitson's performance at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre who insisted on checking his cocking Blackberry every ten minutes. It was a glorious evening, with a heart-warming turn, a gentle breeze, tiny white feathers from the local birdlife blowing picturesquely across the scene like snow, twinkly lights, trees, and twinkly lights in trees. What could truly set the occasion off? Hmm. A cup of hot chocolate to warm the hands on? A cashmere blanket? An overhead comet? Wait, I know. A lit-up two-inch square of self-importance flashing regularly in my peripheral vision would be perfect. Thank goodness you're here, Mr Blackberry, with your chinos and carefully combed hairline of denial.

The wages of sin

I can't be the only person who believes that advertising agencies are somehow infiltrating my brain using lasars and black magic, finding out what my favourite songs are, and then consummately ruining them by changing the lyrics in a clumsy, ham-fisted fashion and thinking that will seduce me into buying their products. 

IT WILL NEVER WORK. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

The latest example: Charlotte Church advertising Virgin Holidays (like she needs the money! but wait, that is a different post) with a rubbish, reworded version of I Want It Now! from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. It is in my Top 10 songs from musicals, and don't think that's not a real list that exists in my head. Here, with a few minutes' preamble, is the original.

The whole concept of pillaging the classics reminds me of revising for exams at school and listening to a local radio station which had a really good indie show on weeknights. But, following the model of commercial radio, it worked on a ratio of about two songs by Kingmaker/The Wonder Stuff /James/other to four minutes of extremely low-rent adverts for local businesses. Perhaps the worst was for a company called Posh Windows And Conservatories, which bastardised Every Day by Buddy Holly, a simple, beautiful, totally perfect song. Whichever 'creative' realised that the name of the company would more or less, just about scan in the same way as 'Love like yours will surely come my way' probably got a pay rise but verily, they are the wages of sin. Even now I feel a shudder of violation whenever I find myself humming 'Every day, prices getting lower', which I do with surprising and hateful frequency. They probably think this means They have won. Comrades, They never will.

Hair diplomacy

When a friend or colleague has their hair cut, there are many warm and complimentary things you can say to express your appreciation of their new look. 'Oh you look gorgeous!' 'I love it!' 'You must be really happy with it,' all strike the right blandly positive note.

But among these inoffensive affirmatives, I would not include: 'Oh, it looks so much better. Really, it's 100% better,'  which I have just overheard. Because, however warm and enthusiastic you are in your delivery, what you're effectively saying is 'You looked awful before and everyone knew it. You were walking around for months, years probably, with dreadful, dreadful hair and now we can uncover our scalded eyes, let them recover from the heinous blight dealt to them by your personal appearance and just get on with our lives.'

It is the kind of comment that rankles with a person. It would rankle with me, but I am easily rankled.