Dear Octopus,
I dedicated last Friday night to the zealous pursuit of good times in the company of my best friends. Whilst falling unceremoniously around the pavement outside one of Carnaby Street's more secretive public houses, I was - for a time at least - held up on my feet long enough to hear a few funny, disgusting and thought-provoking anecdotes, but there was one in particular that I thought might interest your keen mind and strong analytical acumen. You'll like it all the more because it was told by that mysterious and handsome creature known colloquially as 'The Agent', for whom I believe you always had something of a soft spot. I digress.
For the benefit of your understanding and the protection of the very real identities involved, we shall call the heroine of this story Sally. I don't know why. But one day not too long ago, Sally was lugging an extremely heavy suitcase up the stairs of Vauxhall Tube Station. Commuters passed, as they do, without offering a sympathetic glance to her loathsome toil, let alone lending a passing hand. Imagine her relief then when a stranger miraculously offered to help. He was a decidedly rough but kindly-looking fellow, and his offer to carry her case up the remainder of the stairs could not be refused solely on account of his unsavoury appearance. She passed him it gratefully, and caught her breath.
'It's so heavy!' the man commented jovially, 'what have you got in here anyway?'
Sally casually replied, '....oh, nothing really, just work stuff....a couple of laptops and a projector.'
She should have been wiser really. At the top of the stairs, the man bolted like a hungry panther. Carrying her case. He ran like Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump, or Lola in Run Lola Run. From the entrance to the subway she surveyed his bony, bow-legged form disappear under the distant railway bridge, dragging the massive case behind him. His supposed kindness was nothing more than a duplicitous charade. He was a confidence trickster, a ruffian, a blaggard, a vile defrauder of distressed damsels with heavy luggage. And there was no way he would be caught.
Sally allowed herself time to think. The words 'stop thief!' remained trapped in her mouth, unuttered. She was calm, even. Because the case did not contain two laptops and a projector. It contained the corpse of her dead dog.
In her immediate defence (in case you might think her some sort of canine-serial killer carting the remains of her victims around our metropolitan transport network seemingly at random) Sally had adopted the dog from Battersea Dogs' Home a week earlier. It was old. It only had one eye. But it seemed sweet enough. Plus adopting an old dog is less of a commitment than getting a puppy. Forget 'life', 17-year old Romario was not even just for Christmas. He wasn't even for Hallowe'en. It died five days after she adopted it. Upon confronting the home on their extremely sketchy 'returns policy', Sally found that to have the remains collected and incinerated would cost £250. But if she brought it to the home herself, they'd incinerate it for just £50. Not much of a dilemma there. Not owning a car - and not being able to enrol a single friend into so macabre a Saturday venture - she ventured to take the tube alone. Lying to her eventual assailant was out of the understandable fear that he might not take the response, 'oh nothing really...it's just the corpse of a dead Alsatian...' too lightly.
Not a dignified end for the poor dog, clearly. But imagine the idiotically grinning visage of the opportunistic rogue as he sauntered into his dreary hovel, boasting ostentatiously to his Fagin's Gang of fellow criminals that he had successfully pilfered enough computer equipment to kit out a small (very small) office. Imagine his comrades' faces when he grandly opened said purloined artefact to reveal its grisly tenant. I hope he was ashamed.
(Sally, I might add, was secretly thrilled. She saved herself £50.)
The moral of this story? Crime doesn't pay. And if it does, sometimes it pays you in dead dogs. I thank The Agent for allowing me to repeat his story. It's lost a lot of his droll candour and effortlessly loquacious charm in my tedious retelling, but I hope I've at least partially done it justice. If not, I'm sure he can be persuaded to tell it again someday.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 26 September 2011
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Severe Delays (Due To Signal Failure)
Dear Octopus,
This morning my shower broke. The water was running, but was icy-cold. I almost fell back out of it, both shivering and muttering inane swathes of profanity. But aside from the not-inconsiderable angst caused to me by having to use the other shower, I realised that there was a far deeper and terrifying cause for what could at best be called concern and at at worst an all-encompassing horror. My routine had been disturbed.
And then it hit me. I HAVE A ROUTINE.
The whole thing appears to have sneaked up on me, like an aggressive chest infection or desperate urban charity collector. And as I worried my way into the office today, it was painfully - nay excruciatingly - evident how enslaved to said routine I have gradually become.
My alarm goes off at 7.00am. Snooze is set for nine minutes. My sleep is now so controlled by this fact that I now don't even remember 7.09am or even 7.18am. I'm only really awake at 7.27am, where every day I think, 'if I were any sort of a man I'd overcome all of the past failures of my life and get up now...' and every day fail to do so. Every day I get up at 7.36am. Every day. From there I shower - hot water permitting, obviously - attend to my toilette, choose my attire from a horribly small pool of wearable v-neck sweaters and pairs of Levi jeans, get dressed, go downstairs, and put on my trainers. I'm at Wimbledon Park tube no later than 8.08am. Every day the same people are on the platform: Fuckhead Frostyballs (with whom I used to vie for a seat in the second carriage, until I grew tired of his elbows' athleticism constantly outwitting my wit), Gormy Temp-Girl-Smith (who looks terribly well-bred but listens to 'rap' music and can't close her mouth), and Luther Smarm-Diabolo (who appears to want me to think him a City trader when I've come to suspect he works in Westfield Shopping Centre). As the train arrives we all slope into the same carriages, and take the same seats. We all know the exact spots on the platform where the doors will appear. Mine is between the left hand edge of the tube sign and the door-knob of the winter waiting room. Yes. I know that.
Change at South Kensington any time between 8.21am and 8.32am (forgoing signal failure at Earl's Court, and by which time I've always finished the Metro), and am usually at Leicester Square by 8.41am, having moved onto a book. Headphones in, and from the tube to the office I can listen to either three medium lengths songs or two long ones. Normally chosen from a pool even smaller than that of the v-neck sweaters. Outside the office by 8.48am, and at my desk by 8.52am. Sometimes this used to be 8.54am, if I decided to stop en route for a wee. This is no longer the problem it once was, having been edited out due to its unpredictable effect on timing.
Needless to say, this is only about two hours of my morning. The same is true, to lesser or greater extents, for the WHOLE DAY. My whole fucking day is lorded over by such stringent patterns of inconsequential governance. Why? What does it matter? Who cares if I get up late, or early, or arrive at 8.54 rather than 8.52? Would anyone in that office even notice if I didn't come in at all? Who set these Machiavellian axioms to their devious machination, if only in my mind? And why am I so in love with them?
Am I alone? Or is that virile, semen-sweating blaggard Luther Smarm-Diabolo similarly entrenched in meaningless repetition, from which his successful extrication is his sole and heartfelt aim? Did Gormy Temp-Smith spend her childhood envisaging this quiet, gloom-filled martyrdom? Does it make her happy? And why the fuck have we never spoken? How can I have formed these presumptions about them, when I see them every day but know nothing of their lives? What does that say about me?
It's ironic really. You may not think it, but these fervent existential questions are nothing new. They are not original programming in the channel of this mind. In fact they arrive every evening, between Parsons Green and Putney Bridge.
Yes, they too are just constituent parts of the all-encompassing routine.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
This morning my shower broke. The water was running, but was icy-cold. I almost fell back out of it, both shivering and muttering inane swathes of profanity. But aside from the not-inconsiderable angst caused to me by having to use the other shower, I realised that there was a far deeper and terrifying cause for what could at best be called concern and at at worst an all-encompassing horror. My routine had been disturbed.
And then it hit me. I HAVE A ROUTINE.
The whole thing appears to have sneaked up on me, like an aggressive chest infection or desperate urban charity collector. And as I worried my way into the office today, it was painfully - nay excruciatingly - evident how enslaved to said routine I have gradually become.
My alarm goes off at 7.00am. Snooze is set for nine minutes. My sleep is now so controlled by this fact that I now don't even remember 7.09am or even 7.18am. I'm only really awake at 7.27am, where every day I think, 'if I were any sort of a man I'd overcome all of the past failures of my life and get up now...' and every day fail to do so. Every day I get up at 7.36am. Every day. From there I shower - hot water permitting, obviously - attend to my toilette, choose my attire from a horribly small pool of wearable v-neck sweaters and pairs of Levi jeans, get dressed, go downstairs, and put on my trainers. I'm at Wimbledon Park tube no later than 8.08am. Every day the same people are on the platform: Fuckhead Frostyballs (with whom I used to vie for a seat in the second carriage, until I grew tired of his elbows' athleticism constantly outwitting my wit), Gormy Temp-Girl-Smith (who looks terribly well-bred but listens to 'rap' music and can't close her mouth), and Luther Smarm-Diabolo (who appears to want me to think him a City trader when I've come to suspect he works in Westfield Shopping Centre). As the train arrives we all slope into the same carriages, and take the same seats. We all know the exact spots on the platform where the doors will appear. Mine is between the left hand edge of the tube sign and the door-knob of the winter waiting room. Yes. I know that.
Change at South Kensington any time between 8.21am and 8.32am (forgoing signal failure at Earl's Court, and by which time I've always finished the Metro), and am usually at Leicester Square by 8.41am, having moved onto a book. Headphones in, and from the tube to the office I can listen to either three medium lengths songs or two long ones. Normally chosen from a pool even smaller than that of the v-neck sweaters. Outside the office by 8.48am, and at my desk by 8.52am. Sometimes this used to be 8.54am, if I decided to stop en route for a wee. This is no longer the problem it once was, having been edited out due to its unpredictable effect on timing.
Needless to say, this is only about two hours of my morning. The same is true, to lesser or greater extents, for the WHOLE DAY. My whole fucking day is lorded over by such stringent patterns of inconsequential governance. Why? What does it matter? Who cares if I get up late, or early, or arrive at 8.54 rather than 8.52? Would anyone in that office even notice if I didn't come in at all? Who set these Machiavellian axioms to their devious machination, if only in my mind? And why am I so in love with them?
Am I alone? Or is that virile, semen-sweating blaggard Luther Smarm-Diabolo similarly entrenched in meaningless repetition, from which his successful extrication is his sole and heartfelt aim? Did Gormy Temp-Smith spend her childhood envisaging this quiet, gloom-filled martyrdom? Does it make her happy? And why the fuck have we never spoken? How can I have formed these presumptions about them, when I see them every day but know nothing of their lives? What does that say about me?
It's ironic really. You may not think it, but these fervent existential questions are nothing new. They are not original programming in the channel of this mind. In fact they arrive every evening, between Parsons Green and Putney Bridge.
Yes, they too are just constituent parts of the all-encompassing routine.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Sunday, 11 September 2011
'Who Cares?' Said The Fireman. 'This Is Good Cocoa...'
Dear Octopus,
I spent the last week back in Devon. On the first day home I was invited along to the birthday celebrations of one of the founding members of the Jamaican Hopscotch Mafia; the fraternity of misdemeanour within which my older brother Party Squid has risen to become a semi-prominent official. I arrived to find the entire brotherhood engaged in a veritable Olympics of back-garden party games played to much intoxicated fervour and competitive bias; sack races, egg and spoon races, arm wrestling, dance-offs, a bowls tournament, Jenga, and a provincial variant of Ring Of Fire so wild in its practices that I took a picture of the rules so I could use them as the defibrillator with which I could resuscitate many a drunken evening up here in the capital. By nine o'clock I was so worse for wear that Party Squid had to take me home; a fact that will undoubtedly be to my detriment should I venture to try and join the JHM's foreign legion via its online application exams.
In fact I was so mentally, emotionally and spiritually eviscerated by this high and potent dose of uncut debauchery that it took me a full three days to recover. I loitered around my parents' new house like a lonely ghost. Ultimately my mother Vino Squid grew so tired of my groaning that she assigned me the unenviable task of sorting through some of our children's books, to make myself useful and muffle my complaining. In the box I found our old Thomas the Tank Engine books, which had evidently spent many a year now in dusty captivity at the back of an old cupboard.
I was instantly hooked.
It took me a further two days to read them all. I drew some interesting conclusions. Essentially the core characters (forget the peripheral and utterly forgettable Bill and Ben, Donald and Douglas etc) are a pool of masculine archetypes whose arguments, misunderstandings, tensions and frictions constitute the sole narrative template for every small story.
As follows:
I spent the last week back in Devon. On the first day home I was invited along to the birthday celebrations of one of the founding members of the Jamaican Hopscotch Mafia; the fraternity of misdemeanour within which my older brother Party Squid has risen to become a semi-prominent official. I arrived to find the entire brotherhood engaged in a veritable Olympics of back-garden party games played to much intoxicated fervour and competitive bias; sack races, egg and spoon races, arm wrestling, dance-offs, a bowls tournament, Jenga, and a provincial variant of Ring Of Fire so wild in its practices that I took a picture of the rules so I could use them as the defibrillator with which I could resuscitate many a drunken evening up here in the capital. By nine o'clock I was so worse for wear that Party Squid had to take me home; a fact that will undoubtedly be to my detriment should I venture to try and join the JHM's foreign legion via its online application exams.
In fact I was so mentally, emotionally and spiritually eviscerated by this high and potent dose of uncut debauchery that it took me a full three days to recover. I loitered around my parents' new house like a lonely ghost. Ultimately my mother Vino Squid grew so tired of my groaning that she assigned me the unenviable task of sorting through some of our children's books, to make myself useful and muffle my complaining. In the box I found our old Thomas the Tank Engine books, which had evidently spent many a year now in dusty captivity at the back of an old cupboard.
I was instantly hooked.
It took me a further two days to read them all. I drew some interesting conclusions. Essentially the core characters (forget the peripheral and utterly forgettable Bill and Ben, Donald and Douglas etc) are a pool of masculine archetypes whose arguments, misunderstandings, tensions and frictions constitute the sole narrative template for every small story.
As follows:
- Gordon is bossy, arrogant and stubborn. The big swinging dick of the island. Man's man. He considers himself the big fish in a small pond; a tenuous existence (even for a steam engine) which relies on never being successfully undermined. The fact that he is constantly undermined serves to remind him not to take himself so seriously.
- Henry - by contrast - is a raging hypochondriac. Too sensitive a soul. Toughen up, nancy. It's an unforgiving world out there.
- James is a younger, sillier hybrid of both Gordon and Henry. Bit of a prig. The kind of guy who entertains a group but you wouldn't trust one-to-one. Smokes cigarettes but never buys his own. Likes to parade around in Lyle & Scott but would never admit he got it all on sale. Know a few of them.
- Percy's role in life is to mock the others. Should he have holidayed in the area, Freud might have argued that this is a defence mechanism; a means of stifling others' growth by stifling their confidence, but I think Percy is one of those guys who just wants to be accepted. And because he can't do it through any semblance of skill or charm, he has to make jokes only ever at others' expense. As Captain Squid would say, 'rather be naughty than not be noticed.' To be pitied rather than admonished really.
- Thomas is a bit of everything. That's why he's the protagonist. He makes all the mistakes of all the others (albeit to lesser extents) so this is what makes the reader relate to him. You empathise with Thomas, because you are Thomas. He's three-dimensional. For a train.
I lay awake one rainy evening thinking these concepts over, and deciding who was my favourite. The answer though was easy. It was Edward. Reliable, dependable, honest Edward. Never snide or self-aggrandising, never looking for attention, or praise. Just gets on with it. Just satisfied by working hard and doing his best. Some people find these qualities boring; as though it's not fun to be reliable, or entertaining to be a good guy. That really fucking annoys me. In a world of duplicitous misadventure, to be of strong moral fibre is harder than anywhere. Edward isn't boring, he's heroic. He's the sum of Rudyard Kipling's poem If. And the fact that he's old and worn-out, that the other engines laugh at him and don't believe in him, just makes his heroism all the more laudable. The rest of the world can fritter their lives away in meaningless haberdashery, but it is those who work hard and speak the truth who will prevail in the end. I do believe that. The meek, after all, while not necessarily inheriting the earth, will probably get an appropriately decent share of its railways.
I will endeavour, now that I am back in London, to be more like him.
As I stowed the books away after having read them (and not made even the slightest effort to sort them) I realised that Edward was my favourite as a boy. Maybe we never really change, or grow up. Who knows. But it was good to be home.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
(PS: If you got that the title was from The Flying Kipper, Captain Squid's favourite story, you win both a piece of Devon toffee and the last vestiges of my deepest respect that you didn't already own...)
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