Join Us. Join Us.
She got on the bus and took the seat in front of me, one over to the left. She pulled down the fold up seat in front of her and carefully placed upon it an oversized My Little Pony. She arranged it so it stood staring directly at me with its cold plastic eyes; unblinking and unliving and yet monitoring my every move as she gave me the back of her head. She stroked its mane fibres, and when it had absorbed as much of me as it needed she turned it to face someone else. She stroked it some more, and then lay it gently down on the seat, so it could rest and digest.
Before she averted its menacing gaze from me I tested my luck and my bravery and snapped a quick photo on my old Samsung phone. The piece of crap succumbed to the curse of the My Little Pony and refused to give up the picture to the welcoming arms of the laptop. The Bluetooth wouldn’t work, no cable connection or memory card are available, but eventually through ancient magical incantations I was able to free the picture from the accursed trap (by emailing it to myself). I warn you; do not gaze to long into those My Little Pony eyes.
Join Us. Join Us.
We are the things that were and shall be again. Dead by dawn; dead by dawn.
The baby on the bus craving his mother’s indignant attention has figured out comedy babbling. His tiny little baby finger flicked up and down across his lips as he murmured making a wibbling wobbling gabble like a teeny tiny Red Indian. Ab-blab-lab-blab, blib-blib-bib-bib, wib-wib-wibble-bibble, blab-blab-babble-bibble.
Later and another uninterested, exhausted and under-qualified mother on another bus is bored and ignoring her screaming children. A five-or-six year old girl is falling off her chair repeatedly and laughing and a one-ish year old in the pram shouts a sort of “Rah rah rah, rah rah raaaAHHHHH, AHHH, rah rah rah.” As the rahI builds to a raaaaAAAHHHHHAHHHHHHHHHHHH the mum gives in and shoves her hand over the baby’s mouth, teaching her a new game: If I scream RAHHH mummy pays me a tiny bit of attention. If I do it again, she does it again. The more noise I make the more attention I get. Great game.
On an unrelated note I think the telly is reading my mind. Last week as a front seat passenger on the motorway I was suddenly come by an inexplicable feeling of “aren’t motorways weird”. It felt as though they were entirely new and I was experiencing them through the eyes of someone fresh to the whole concept of lots of cars moving quickly in the same direction. Now I look at the TV listings and BBC4 is showing The Secret Life of the Motorway, “A look at the public response to the impact of motorways on town and country. Contains some strong language.” No doubt also containing lots of ancient footage of brand new motorways; entirely free from cars and congestion. Sparkling virgin tarmac being tentatively tested by a lone pioneer driver, perhaps to the tinkling and tooting sounds of Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’.
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