Sorry seems to be the hardest word

In the unlikely event that the young woman I almost trod on when getting off the train the other morning is reading this – apologies for almost treading on you.

I did say ‘sorry’ at the time, honestly. It’s just that it was early in the morning and my voice, rather rusty from several hours of not being used and several hours of red wine abuse prior to that, turned a cheery, apologetic ‘sorry’ into a growl that even scared me – so I’m not in the least surprised that you gave a ‘no problem’ smile but there was a flicker of apprehension in your eyes.

I am not at my best in the morning. To be honest, I am frequently not at my best but mornings are a particularly bad time in that the undertaking of normal social exchanges, like the one above, result in my coming off like a loon. This is, I think, in part because of the media. Before crime shows dominated the telly schedule, I looked like an inoffensive, gangly bispected bloke. Thanks to CSI etc. the world now knows that the gangly bispected bloke is the one with the lock-up full of dead cheerleaders. Thanks television.

So, AM social interaction best avoided I think. Apart from picking up my coffee and doughnut from Krispy Kreme, which is always a pleasure. This is because as I wait behind somebody buying their double dozen I occasionally run through what Hollywood calls the ‘cute meet’ scenario in my head. The ‘cute meet’ is when a couple are thrown together by a shared experience, for instance reaching for the same last doughnut and then getting into a ‘you have it, no you have it’ before the doughnut guy chops it in two and they pair bond over their doughnut and waddle off to have fat wheezy sex.

The reality is, at best, the bloke would say ‘you have it’ and the woman would say ‘thanks’ and that would be it, because I have learned that you do not get between a woman and doughnut. Or, more likely, it’s a hair-pulling, scratching rollaround fight over the last original glazed. Which is, of course, a ridiculous exaggeration…nobody would get into a fight over an original glazed. A custard filled chocolate coated though?

At least he didn't drop it far

Walking to work this morning I witnessed a small anti-social act, somebody ripping the cellophane cover from a packet of fags and tossing it to the pavement. I suppose pocketing it would have delayed their ripping open the packet itself to get their precious nicotine hit.

Usually I just tut and don’t reprimand the litterer, this is because I know that from psychopaths are more likely to litter than normal folk and I hate being knifed first thing in the morning.

On this occasion though there was absolutely no way I was going to confront the fellow.

This was because he was a dwarf on a mobility chariot.

I did briefly think of saying ‘smoking stunts your growth’ but was worried that his battery might be freshly charged and he would run me down, like Ben Hur, but shorter.

God alone knows why he needed a mobility chariot although with legs that size it must be faster than walking and I have no problem with him smoking, but why litter? Does he not realise that if everyone did that, the stuff would pile up in drifts. Okay for me, but by the time it was up to my thighs he’d need a snorkel.

I think what really put me off remonstrating, apart of course from a paralysing fear of any sort of confrontation, was that there was just no way it was going to end well. Nobody but me had witnessed the litter and folk on their way to work in the morning walk quickly and heads down, so what they would have been presented with was, no doubt, an altercation where a bloke was shouting at a disabled dwarf. There is no way I am coming out of that well.

In fact for the remainder of the walk to the office my rebel brain and sadist imagination ganged up on me. This is the same imagination, by the way, that steadfastly refuses to come up with the plot of a novel that will depose Dan Brown from the top of the bestseller charts and have me acknowledged as the Jane Austin of my generation (or should that be Dickens…which one wrote about bonnets?) Anyway the most likely scenario, according to my brain (which, truth be told has not had a track record of reliability in this sort of thing, especially during my twenties where, despite all the evidence of previous weeks and months, it kept convincing me that that girl over there would dance with me if asked and not result in yet another bout of humiliation) would be me and the bloke rolling in the gutter, my hands round his neck, his teeth clamped on my ear while a selection of collegues who happened to be passing watched aghast as they saw me trying to kill a dwarf, something that is usually the preserve of ringwraiths.