UNMOVABLE OBJECT

“You’ve been asked to leave the station platform,” said the police officer calmly, “…by the railway staff. You don’t have a ticket, and…”

“I ain’t done nothing fam though,” protested the young, hooded figure. I pitched him to be about nineteen, still with the look of boyhood about his face but with wisps of beard hair. He was scowling on the bench, arms locked to his body, eyes piercing the platform floor as though he wanted to laser beam a hole in it. It can’t be a great experience having two policemen tower over you like that.

“Are you gonna leave then?” asked one of the officers. His arms were folded too, but in authority rather than defiance. He stood with one foot forward, leaning into the strength of his frame, the tactical, sturdy boot pointing towards the bench. The other officer was also standing strategically - equidistant between the bench and the edge of the platform. The last thing these men wanted was for the boy to bolt an escape anywhere near the tracks.

“What have I done though?” he growled at them.

“You’re drunk and you’ve been asked to leave.”

“How am I drunk though, fam?” he shouted. It wasn’t exactly a question, more a challenge for the law enforcers to prove it.

It reminded me of being a youth worker; a lot of that job felt like having this kind of conversation with an angry bulk of baseball cap and hoodie. The other commuters backed away a little, eyes flicking dangerously to each other as we waited for our train. The scene at the bench was looking like unstoppable force and immovable rock, and the routine of the waiting 7:07 to Paddington was obviously disrupted by it.

As a youth worker, I’d have known that, without some phenomenal skill, this situation would have ended in defeat for me. The immovable object, the sulking pile of teenager, would almost always win. After all, what can a volunteer youth worker do?

Well, not what the police can do. The two officers exchanged a professional glance, then, as one, grabbed the man-boy by both his arms. He struggled of course. There were cries of “Get off me, fam.” And a cool reply of “We’re not your fam” from the trained men. The boy was against the fence. His arms were behind his back in the grip of the law.

I expected the click of handcuffs, but it wasn’t necessary. They wrestled him round, grabbed an arm each again, and bundled him away, his legs flailing in mid-air like a toddler in a tantrum. They hustled him off the platform, over the bridge, and out of the station at the entrance.

I think I understand what had happened.

A railway worker peered out of his door on the other side of the track, then poked his head back inside. It would have been him who had called the police. Perhaps the young man had been wailing, or shouting at people, or perhaps posing a danger to himself. The goal was to remove the danger from the platform; and in this instance that had required the help and physical skill of two police officers.

The police officers then, had the same goal - hence the request, the warning, and the unceremonious escorting from platform 4. What then, I wondered, would they do when they’d got him off the station premises?

As it turned out, I just don’t think they wanted the paperwork.

What did they do? They let him go, and then, moments later, just before my train arrived, they drove off. Problem solved.

It’s not solved though really, is it? I mean, really, how could it be? That young man is a symptom of something bigger, far less solvable in his own life. How did he end up there? What led him to be inebriated at 7:05 in the morning? Where will he go next? What’s the big story in his life? And what about the lives of countless others, up and down the country, with gaping, unspeakable holes in their world? What’s their solution? Being bundled off station platforms so that the nice commuters don’t get disrupted? Being chucked out of schools? Being hassled out of shops, jobs, youth clubs, polite middle-class churches?

The train rumbled into the next station along. I get off here to catch a connection to Oxford, and I was keen to know which platform I needed. Was it 8B like the trainline app said, or would it be 12B as it was before, and the time before that, and the time before that? I looked around, in the middle of the steady stream of passengers heading for the escalators. There, shuffling along in a black hoodie, was the same young man, still scowling, still piercing holes with his eyes. He’d got back on the platform, and back on the train.

I mean, what was the point of all that?

GRIZZLY-BATTERED CHICKEN MORSELS

We were in the garden yesterday, fixing up our hosepipe and planting some lavender. It was fun, but nowhere near as fun as it seemed next door, where our neighbours were blasting music while the kids bounced on their trampoline.

Sammy came out of the kitchen and set to work on a lavender pot. I was still dripping wet thanks to not quite connecting the hose to the reel properly.

I’d also been distracted by some of the most incredible lyrics I’d ever overheard…

“I just listened to an entire song about chicken nuggets,” I whispered. I was mystified and not just a little bit wide-eyed with bafflement. “What’s that all about?”

“Chicken nuggets,” said she, laughing.

It was ridiculous though - listen to this:

I eat chicken nuggets when I pee

I eat chicken nuggets while I'm in a tree

I eat chicken nuggets when I'm drinking tea

I dont want five or ten, I want 23

Talk about lazy song writing. It’s as though someone had five minutes, a gun to their head, and a rhyming dictionary.

I mean the song is all about how this person is basically in love with chicken nuggets so fair enough - love is no respecter of where you are or what you’re doing, but if you’re eating chicken nuggets while you pee, you need to have a good long look at yourself. That (asides from being a quarter of the way to ‘doing an Elvis’) is disgusting.

In a tree is a better place for gallumping your poultry bites, but it does prompt a few questions. Would you climb a tree with your chicken nuggets, or would you have the chicken nuggets delivered to the tree? Are you in a tree house or just perched on a branch? What’s the context? I feel like I need to know because this is worrying behaviour.

Then there’s drinking tea. Not the usual accompaniment to a pot of earl grey, but understandable if you really do love a chicken nugget. I’m no expert though but would you normally drink tea with nuggets? I’d have thought most nugget connoisseurs would prefer a gulp of Fanta. It’s not my place to criticise, and admittedly, tea is perfectly fine with the grizzly-battered chicken morsels, but I think I’d still recommend, ooh I don’t know, maybe a digestive biscuit?

And by the way, 23 is both weird, and let me tell you, too many chicken nuggets. Where are you going, to order exactly 23 chicken nuggets? Or are you cooking them yourself from frozen? 

I must be old, I thought to myself. Then I remembered I was in the garden, wrestling with a hosepipe and helping my wife plant some lavender in some lovely plant pots. The kids next door should be in no doubt whatsoever about the age bracket of their neighbours.

AN UNSEASONABLE JUNE

In weather news, thanks to good old global warming, we’re now getting heatwaves (would you believe) in the middle of the hay fever season. 

Call me old-fashioned but June’s supposed to be wet, isn’t it? We’re supposed to sit indoors saying things like, ‘British Summer Time eh?’ and rolling our eyes as the pansies get drenched and rainwater bounces from the trampoline. So what’s with all this unseasonable heat and sunshine? I mean, it’s supposed to be summer! How about a little British downpour?

Actually, it has rained. The heat brings thunder and so, as each hot afternoon shades over with grey, we’ve had a couple of thunderstorms. It’s not exactly the dribbling June rain we’re used to - it all comes down at once in a thunderstorm. The dark sky flickers, the green trees wave in the sudden cool breeze, then enormous spots of rain blot the concrete. That‘s something.

“Kind of swirls the pollen around though, eh?” said a friend of mine the other day, dolefully looking out of the rain washed window.

“Yeah,” I replied, sniffling.

This whole week is a week of temperatures in the high twenties then. Hot, hot, hot. I keep having to apologise to my wife for saying things out of grumpiness, or from heat-exhaustion; things I don’t mean, that would be ill-advised at the best of times! I was already getting monstrous because of the hay fever; the heat just adds petrol to the barbecue. She’s a wonder. I have lots to learn.

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 27

First full week of June. Things are bad. I’m stuffed up. Like Monsieur Le Guillotin, I’m wondering about ways to slice off my own head again. Don’t worry - I say this every year. Sammy thinks it’s ‘melodramatic’.

It’s like it’s all building up inside your head - a slowly squeezing pressure of mucus growing in the spaces between your skull and your brain, pushing like an inflating balloon.

You’d think a sneeze or two would help let it out, but somehow that dragonish burst of fire just makes things worse. And it’s never just a sneeze or two - it’s a volley of three, four… five explosions that cover you, your hands, your t-shirt, your tissues in sticky green snot. And still your head’s foggy.

Worse though because now your throat’s on fire. And not in a nice, just-had-a-lovely-spicy-curry way either - no, it’s more like you’ve somehow inhaled sandpaper.

Eyes too. Mine are watery. I mean it looks like I’ve been punched repeatedly in the face. Two red slits glisten with tears behind my glasses, and the world in front of them swims like water on a windscreen.

I always complain, don’t I? I mean it is awful. I don’t like that this short period of time arrives each year and turns me into Mr Hyde. It’s very unbecoming - worse for the way I handle it. I feel as though the ‘good’ thing to do is just to suffer and shut up and be thankful, as though it were character-building. But honestly, it really is bad. Every year. First full week of June. Bad.

Interesting comparison I guess with the Jekyll and Hyde thing. I got the impression that Hyde was a sort of subset of Jekyll, rather than an augmented monster. He was what remained when all the goodness and morality was taken away - Hyde is in all of us, probably the thing Stephenson was getting at.

If it’s a good analogy, it means this dragon-snot-monster is in me: caged for 50 weeks of the year, set loose, raw and angry, by the drifting pollen, but inside me. Bleugh. Horrible thought. Nobody likes being exposed.

After all, what if the cage has other weaknesses? What if there are other situations that could loose Mr Hyde on an unsuspecting world? What if I’m very angry and I’m two thoughts and two scenarios away from turning into the monster without the hay fever?

Question for another time, I reckon. For now, I’ve got to find a way to sail above the season and not be so scratchy. And in any case, it can’t be more than a week or two before things get a lot easier, right?

FAJITA NIGHT IS THE BEST IN TOWN

Fajita night round here tonight. My favourite. Sammy put extra fajita spice on too, which made it eye-wateringly good.

The joke is apparently, that I don’t like messy food but I love fajita night. Fair. I can’t bear it when a tall burger falls apart or a custard slice splats sideways under a fork. Those things are irritating. But somehow when it’s the gooey splodge of dripping guacamole and salsa from a sopping tortilla wrap, all is forgiven.

The trick of course, is not to overfill them. That way you can still fold over the bottom like an envelope and not get cheesy dip running down your sleeve. I forgot tonight. I just stuffed mine full - lettuce, sour cream, grated cheese, guac, peppers, and of course el pollo picante, the ol’ spicy chicken poking out of the top. Mmhm.

I was quickly a mess. Fingers covered in sticky sauce, lips tingling, bits of pepper and lettuce tumbling out of the poorly constructed wrap, flakes of cheese flying across the table. It is messy, fajita night, but I really love it. In the end I grabbed a knife and fork and ate it like a calzone. It was like being a mafia don, sitting happily at the back of the diner, surrounded by crumbs and entitlement.

“Context is everything though,” said Sammy, sagely, when we were thinking about it later. “You eat messy food in your own home, but in someone else’s…”

She’s quite right. I care less about the inevitable splashes and spillages at home. Anywhere else and a personal slop would be mortifying. And fajitas make that likely. Imagine your face covered in sour cream and cheese, like a baby, at somebody else’s house!

“You break up Jaffa Cakes with your fingers too,” said Sammy. True. Habit. I can’t seem to do ‘half-moon’ or ‘total eclipse’ so I just absent-mindedly treat them like communion wafers.

I don’t want to be disrespectful by the way, but Jaffa Cakes would make excellent communion wafers. It takes a lot of courage and self-sacrifice to share a Jaffa Cake with your fellow believers. And there’s theological symbolism too; though I won’t go into it.

She meant of course that I seem to enjoy making my food more messy than it needs to be. And it’s never truer than with a gloriously packed tortilla on fajita night!

My cutlery scraped the plate as the last of the chicken scooped up the excess salsa, and was suddenly gulped down from the end of the fork. I grabbed a bit of kitchen roll and scrubbed my lips and cheeks with it, satisfaction glistening in my contented face.

“Eh Rocco,” I felt like saying, “It’s the best joint in town, boys, the best - in - the - town.”

Sammy just looked at me and smiled. I really like fajita night.