Then you return to Blighty and have two negative exposures in one day.
At lunchtime, in Eat, the woman in front of me was buying three salads - presumably for her and two colleagues - and was paying with luncheon vouchers. A group of twenty-year old ex-public school boys from the Prince Harry Behaviour School walked in, all wearing pink ties with enormous knots pulled sloppily off their necks, all braying at the top of their artificially accented voices, all being annoyingly over-hormonally ill-brought up arrogantly male upper class twats.
In loud voices they proclaimed "Fucking luncheon vouchers. Giggle giggle snort snort deride condescend fucking luncheon vouchers". I really wanted to give them a pieceof my mind about
a) how rude it is to make loud comments about people in their earshot - poor woman must have felt self-conscious or mortified - and
b) to grow up and start understanding the eonomics of the workplace - presumably her workplace doesn't provide a canteen or sommon room, so issues LVs instead. So what.
On the train home two women. Obviously acquaintances, chance meeting. Both of them really ugly. They may not have been born ugly. It was a mixture of the cheap yellow home-peroxided hair and their utter lack of humour, in all its subtleties and nuances. Some mention made of some 'flu bug that's coming over here. How does it get here? Sideways furtive glance at me (who was looking very foreign with my dark hair and beige complexion) and a whispered 'immigrants'. Made me laugh!
Continued conversation about their journey to/from work. I couldn't quite work it out, but they both go a convoluted route to avoid something or other. One stood up immediately the train left Balham in order to ensure that she was able to get off at Streatham Hill.
Moaning and complaining about the new road layout and how difficut it is to cross (I have to say, it is slightly irritating, but it's all covered by Green Men). Then moaning about the floods in Carlisle. As far as I can tell, it's all Tony Blair's fault, because he wants a plane like Air Force One. My instinct tells me they are the Streatham Vale Chapter of the BNP.
But what struck me most of all was their clear shared belief that everything is conspiring against them. They are depressed about everything, their mouths are turned down in disapproval, and there was no indication whatsoever that either of them had the slightest ability to look on the funny side, or to shrug anything off, to live with it.
The Braying Hoorays and the BNP women both have my pity. Their lack of humanity, of compassion, of love, mars their very existence.
For 2005 I am going to be filled with compassion because it is only through compassion that we find love, through love peace, and, well, it really is the meaning of life...
From now on I am going to be the nicest most beautiful person on the internet
