Rocket Science

I have that woozy cast adrift feeling normally associated with Monday mornings. It's cold outside. My car is covered in rust coloured leaves fallen from a tree with slices of white bread around the base of its trunk. People are hatted, hooded and scarfed. There are lots of fat hands in small pockets. Red paper poppies on chests everywhere.

Some of my day has been spent in contemplation of how very peculiar it is that we have a part of the body called ‘the small’. Much of my day has been spent feeling completely fucking disenchanted with everything.

I did learn that a team of Japanese sociologists and psychiatrists have come up with what they claim is the perfect chat up line: “Rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiy-oh” which loosely translates, if my magnificent grasp of the Japanese language serves me correctly, into “This time next year, let’s be laughing together.”

British chat up lines are more along the lines of:
“Nice legs – what time do they open?”
“Here’s 10p, darlin – ring yer Mum and tell her you won’t be home tonight”
“Is that a ladder in your tights or a stairway to heaven?”
“Do you work for the Post Office? I thought I saw you checking out my package”

There’s not much in the small ads of the latest edition of the London Review of Books but this deserves a mention:

“Tonight I’m off to Baton Rouge to have sexual intercourse with Josephine Baker. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Chichester, waiting for Holby City to start. Archeologist and perennial folie du jour seeks F to 98 for high-kicking sequined frolics. Box no. 21/01”

Er... I don't really know who Josephine Baker is but I guess that's why they invented t'internet.

Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night and there's already a lot of popping, banging and whizzing over the city. I was once a juror for an armed robbery trial at the Old Bailey. The defendant was as guilty as fuck but he had fine counsel and we had to acquit. At one point, the defence lawyer really pressed his client's girlfriend (who looked about 12) on how she could be so sure that she was with the accused on the night of November 5th - thus proving that he could not possibly have committed the crime. She came over all shy and giggly and explained that she remembered the evening extremely well because it was the night that she had lost her virginity. The unctuous lawyer smiled - rather pervily, I thought - turned dramatically towards us and smarmed, "So... it was fireworks of ONE kind AND another..." What a git.

I am very happy that this week is nearly over. Just 7 more days and a funeral to get through and we’ll be living la vida loca on a 12 day Tom Waits Extravaganza.