He looked like Morrissey, think Suedehead, only weedier.
He only stood out to me because he'd pushed in front of me to get on the train and raced to take the only available seat.
It takes a certain kind of man to do that. Certainly not my certain kind of man.
I imagined him out at dinner with friends, calculator in one hand, bill in the other, arguing over five cents still owed.
Postscript 'The sort of child who collected stamps and killed ants with magnifying glasses' (Courtesy - The Letter M - 09/11/06).
I noticed her mainly for her hat. Blue and green, in the shape of a bucket with a brim that did not balance at all against the size/shape of the hat itself. It was not the generall un-ironedness of her dress, the fact that blues and greens in the print did not even nearly match her hat, or the large bluebird-with-loveheart tattoo on her left shoulder - it was the white wraparound sunnies she was wearing that belied her lack of style.
The sort of girl who might flick her cigarette out her car window as she shouts at the kids in the back seat to be quiet.
He got on at Wollstonecraft and sat across from me. Lightly built - definitely asian heritage in his bone-structure, but not in his height. His hair was soft, thick and wavy and dark. He wore drainpipe back jeans and loose white shirt. The shirt had brown geometric designs embroidered on it. He was righthanded as he wore a beautiful silver watch with a cobalt-blue face on his left hand and several glow-in-the-dark friensdship bands. He was beautiful in a Yoko Ono-Julian Lennon sort of a way. The thing that really got me wondering was the Australian Stockmans Hat resting on his knee..
Marvelling at my own ability to make it to the train this morning, as exhausted as I was without a wink of sleep all night, I got lucky enough to be seated across from a young woman who was having an excellent chuckle at some sort of mobile video unit. She had gourgeous cheekbones, and an adorable cheeky smile. She made my morning this morning. With her nice red backpack, and her maybe-couldabeen fake LV tan handbag and her white flip-flops. She cheered me up, so I caught her eye and smiled at her when I got off the train. Cool.
Leaving my exit station a whole other story. You know those moments you have when you think the world has gone mad? Right. Picture this. On one side of the station exit we have - five - burly blokes wielding pneumatic drills. Busily hacking up concrete. On the other side we have an elderly gentleman busking with an oboe.
I would like to know if he made any money, how long it took him and how much. I couldn't hear him. Am damned sure no one else could either. Hmmm.
Last week I got a migraine in the morning, and had a new pair of shoes by the end of the day. Want to know more? Last Thursday morning after waking in the wee small hours with that dark pulsing pain that usually signals the onset of a migraine, I'd been able to get to the medication I take for them - which tends to knock me right out for about six hours at a time, so I'd run late for work. Fine with my boss (nice man) and to speed my journey - I'd decided to take a cab.
Good thinking as there was barely any traffic.
Long day at work and I reckon a good one - given that I was probably not functioning at my full cerebral capacity and come 7:30pm on the downhill side of tired. So I wander down to the station, wait the three minutes for my train (brilliant really given the time I was travelling) hop off at my station, take the escalator up - marvelling quietly to myself at how some people just don't seem to get pedestrian traffic flows in confined spaces - like RAILWAY STATIONS.
Tangent: How is it possible that people need to run down the stairs, on the exact same side as the people getting off the train climb up them? Why can't people keep to the left (same as traffic flows on the road)?
Why is it necessary to spend everybody sprawling and ducking and trying to get out of your way - when they're also faced with the additional task of climbing up stairs?
Back on track (haha) So I get to my station glide up the escalator thinking about what I've got to do when I get in my front door - and uh-oh. Because I'd taken a cab to work, I hadn't bought a return train ticket. And had forgotten to buy one at the station when I was leaving work. There were guards (you know the ones, everyone calls them Seagulls) at my home station.
And if I'd gone up to them they would have had to issue me with a fine, as I was travelling on public transport without a ticket.
Because I'd simply forgotten to buy one - not because I was trying to get a ride for free.
Because I'd been extremely busy that day - I was a little sleepy, not thinking straight, and I'd had a migraine (and medication) earlier in the day - and still went to work because they really needed me that day.
So I figured if I put my head down, and just switched platforms as casual as you like the guards wouldn't even notice me - so I could get another train back to where I'd just come from, buy the ticket - and all would be sweet.
Worked perfectly. Until I got to the station I'd just come from.
I then decided to take the bus home instead - drops me five metres from my front door - so pretty handy really.
But then I wandered past a shoe store.
Hmmm. So that's how the story ends. I started the day with a migraine and came home with new shoes. And that's exactly how one of those days should end.
(I did get a bus just fine - if you were wondering!).
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