Branches and roots
Everything is drip, drip, dripping here at the moment. The rain drips from trees, gutters and umbrellas and from the brim of my hat. A hat says something about a chap, mine for instance says: ‘I have a cheap hat’. It’s a green canvas jobbie but its beauty is that it’s easily adaptable. Stick a twig in it and you’re good to go for jungle warfare, stick a few lures in it and you can weekend on the banks of the Tay. Best of all the wide brim keeps the rain off me and decants it onto any passing dwarf - of which there are more than you’d think as it’s panto time.
Rain also means delays on the trains as signals short and rails become slick. This gives one more time to consider one’s fellow commuters up and down the platform and, apart from the obvious thoughts such as ‘is she naked under that coat?’ one does start to recognise familiar faces. Faces such as ‘the professor’, a chap who had been catching the same train for years. The danger is that one starts to fantasise about the home life of these sorts and the next thing you know your imagination is hammering towards the darkness like a roller-coaster cart with a lax maintenance crew and you’re wondering if they are the type to have a dungeon in their back bedroom.
Which is why I’m now convinced that most commuters read the papers to distract themselves from such thoughts. Certainly I was distracted by a genuine WTF? moment after reading that the PM had decided to sort of apologise for Britain’s part in the slave trade. What? What’s this got to do with me? I had nothing to do with it and seeing as it was abolished over 100 years ago I can’t see that there are too many people who are directly involved still hanging around.
If you want to do something about the slave trade then have a go at Nike for running sweatshops and the supermarkets for using gangmasters and illegal immigrants to pick crops - do something in the here and now.
Also - I really enjoyed ‘Roots’. No slave trade - no telly mini-series. Some people just don’t see the big picture.
Rain also means delays on the trains as signals short and rails become slick. This gives one more time to consider one’s fellow commuters up and down the platform and, apart from the obvious thoughts such as ‘is she naked under that coat?’ one does start to recognise familiar faces. Faces such as ‘the professor’, a chap who had been catching the same train for years. The danger is that one starts to fantasise about the home life of these sorts and the next thing you know your imagination is hammering towards the darkness like a roller-coaster cart with a lax maintenance crew and you’re wondering if they are the type to have a dungeon in their back bedroom.
Which is why I’m now convinced that most commuters read the papers to distract themselves from such thoughts. Certainly I was distracted by a genuine WTF? moment after reading that the PM had decided to sort of apologise for Britain’s part in the slave trade. What? What’s this got to do with me? I had nothing to do with it and seeing as it was abolished over 100 years ago I can’t see that there are too many people who are directly involved still hanging around.
If you want to do something about the slave trade then have a go at Nike for running sweatshops and the supermarkets for using gangmasters and illegal immigrants to pick crops - do something in the here and now.
Also - I really enjoyed ‘Roots’. No slave trade - no telly mini-series. Some people just don’t see the big picture.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home