He seems pleasant enough, perhaps too pleasant. He stands in a shop doorway and greets everyone with a chirpy but servile hello. His posture is slightly hunched with his hands cupped together, not that different to a picture of a mouse in an Enid Blighton novel, stood in front of the doorway of a cosy woodland cottage. He’s not employed by the shop though. Other times you’ll meet him at a street corner and the hello will seem more startled, like you’ve caught him doing something naughty. He’s a large fellow, you can imagine he has quite a good right hand too.
Other times he stands in the middle of the streets and shouts at a person that doesn’t exist. He sometimes walks way from this other person, but comes back shouting “ fucking cunt, what did you fucking say, I’ll fucking kill you, cunt!” waving those big fists. Obviously the shadow had called him a coward or maybe worse. I have noticed that other locals tend to say the same thing about him, “Oh don’t worry about him, he’s harmless.” This often strikes me as strange; we only say that line about dogs and the mentally ill. No one says it about professionals or the bourgeois. Oh that’s my uncle Frank, he’s a Policeman, oh don’t worry about him, he’s harmless.
I agree with the sentiment though. If you don’t believe me, get on a tube train at rush hour. Take a look at peoples faces when get bumped into, or deprived of physical space. The hatred, the unguarded malice is amazing. If these people found a gun in their hand, you bet they’d use it.
A long time ago, while working as a gardener for a theme park I attended many nauseating seminars. Many of them detailed how to act around guests; we weren’t allowed to refer to them as customers. The most nauseating mantra I was force-fed was “A smile is a passport to a better attitude.” That one got me close to chundering, but it hits the point bang on the head. When thinking about my schizoid/ tourettes suffering chum, and the viscious glares and tuts that ripple through commuterville, well it tells me this: Your sanity is nothing more than your ability to keep your venom caged behind a smile.
Dear reader, if you ever get bumped into by me on the Victoria Line, do me one little favour. I am much more happy to be called a cunt than I am to be tutted at.