Yesterday evening I wrote this:
In the olden days I would have had a camera, but today I have a phone, and I’m appalled, but that’s another subject altogether. I will write about that another day. Meanwhile, a swan has wandered by accident and nonchalant into the photograph I’m about to take, but on closer inspection I can see it’s not a swan, it’s a very large seagull. On my way home from work I saw they had some new frocks in the window of Hargreaves’s Ironmongers. They are an ironmonger’s joke; it’s well-known that ironmongers have the best sense of humour of all shopkeepers, and Mr. Hargreaves is old school, and used to supply hardware and weapons to the working men’s clubs. The shop sells key fobs with HARGREAVES printed on a plastic thingy that only cost ten pence, and they could just as easily give one away each time like, say, when someone buys something, but they don’t. In these times of throwaway and short attention spans a giveaway is a pretty rare thing. Everybody is out for more of something. I read the newspapers (well not all of them, only the ones I find left behind on the bus) and it seems that a selection of skilled workers and public service utility mechanical operatives are lining up to stake new pay claims because they would very much like to do less work for more money, or that’s what it says in the papers. It might not be accurate. Yes, I’m rambling, but any minute now I will get back onboard my train of thought, and then I will give the conductor my ticket and carry on telling you what’s on my mind. Some of it, anyway. Until that happens, take a look around. On the other side of the road across from Hargreaves’s Ironmongers is Paradise Cantonese (“authentic Cantonese cuisine to eat at home”), and the people who own it really love you, which is represented by an emoticon that doesn’t love you. That stupid little face doesn’t know what love is. There’s no way your world is its world, but the people in Paradise Cantonese love you, and their kung pao chicken is my favourite (smiley face). At the moment they’re closed, so nothing is happening there, but they will be opening later (and they deliver).
Like I said, I wrote that yesterday, and I might throw it away because it’s a bit of a jumble, but today is Saturday and, to tell you the truth, nothing much is happening here either. I’m still in my nightgown and cap waiting for the football to come on the TV. All that nonsense about a photo and a seagull swan I dreamed up because I was aching for something interesting to happen and sometimes I have to conjure things from out of nowhere because otherwise they aren’t there. For me it’s going to be another weekend spent waiting for next week. A wedding car just crawled slowly by at a funereal pace, past the house where I have a room, and turned into Wendover Road heading I suppose for the Methodist church, and hesitated for a couple of minutes as if the driver doesn’t know where he’s going, or perhaps the bride is having second thoughts. If that’s the case, someone ought to tell her she’s left it a bit late. Then I looked more closely and realised it wasn’t a wedding car, it was a hearse. I hadn’t noticed the big box in the back. I think I need my eyes tested. I might make a note of that bit about the car in my Book of Ideas. There could be something there I could work on and then send to a magazine and take the first tentative steps on the path to fame and fortune, and the life of O’Reilly.
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Conrad Titmuss
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