How to steal an old man's glasses (don't try this at home or you could end up with a squirrel in yoru cider)

Considerably disorientated. I'm now in a new job and living in a new home in a strange northern town where it rains like the days before The Great Flood. Absent from the blogosphere for a two weeks (building an ark in my garden). I've been missed, right? My soul screams for validation, my self-worth has dropped lower than a rudeboy's crotch. Actually that's a lie, the break was rather nice. But Mr Condescending has been pestering me daily, can't live without my posts apparently. I told him to stop badgering me but he persisted. To make matters worse Rubbish rang me up last night and screamed down the phone, said he'd turdbomb my doorstep if I didn't get my act together. Kids huh?! Told him I'd retaliate by putting laxative in his cider, but I really can't be bothered to go to Wales so...

The old man sat on the top desk of the bus. He was staring straight ahead, a pair of thick-lensed black-rimmed glasses clung to his face. For the record I don't condone the stealing of old men's glasses. Seriously, why go through all that effort when they are unlikely to fetch you anything on eBay? Besides, old men cause enough trouble in the world when they can see clearly. The last thing any of us need is millions of pensioners stumbling around without their glasses. The world would descend rapidly into bedlam. Pensioners would be seen dragging squirrels about on leads, stuffing cats into letterboxes and waiting outside the pub on Thursday mornings while moaning that the "post office" isn't open. Come to think about it, stuffing some cats into Rubbish's letter box would be pretty damn funny. Or putting a squirrel in his cider.

Take the following situation. In our new street rubbish collection takes place on a Friday. During the week our bins stay in the garden to the rear of the house. The garden is surrounded by a high two-metre fence and accessible either from our back door or from the garden gate, which is also two-metres high and double-locked from the inside. One of the locks is half-way down the gate, i.e. only reachable if you are one of those astronomically tall men from China that occasionally make the news and use their long arms to reach down the throats of dolphins. Last Friday morning my wife asked me to take the bins out. I went into the garden and to my surprise the bins were not there. I went round to the front and there they were, sitting smugly on the pavement, chatting amongst themselves no doubt. The only plausible explanation is that at the crack of dawn an elderly neighbour had broken in and dragged them out front.

Now there are two possibilities here. Either this (uncharacteristically athletic) pensioner vaulted the two-metre fence or they managed to unlock the garden gate using a fishhook on a piece of string. Can you imagine the mayhem if this pensioner was without their glasses? I'd probably be woken at 5am as I am dragged outside with a fishhook through my nose. (This Friday I'm going to get up crazily early and find out how they get in). But anyway...

Danny pressed the buzzer, got up from his seat and started to walk up the aisle. It was cold and wet outside, the bus was packed. He moved slowly, his steps small and determined, carefully keeping his balance as the bus lurched about in a deliberate attempt to send him into the lap of an unsuspecting granny. With each step he grasped the handrails on back of the seats each side of him, he would not be defeated and no grannies would be squashed. Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.

The middle finger of his right hand hooked under the bridge of an old man's glasses. In a single movement he gracefully lifted the glasses off the old man's face and launched them into the air. They sailed over the next five seats, all of which were occupied, their path a beautiful parabolic spectacle (haha, two weeks absent and my wit is still as sharp as a blunt razor). They cleared the passengers and clattered down the stairwell. The speed and trajectory - unimaginably perfect in every way - would have made the Roman army's lead trebuchet operative sick with jealousy.

The old man whipped his hands up to his eyes. "Someone's stolen my glasses," he howled. One moment he had been quietly looking forward to Coronation Street, the next moment his glasses had been whipped from his face.

Funniest moment of his life, Danny tells me. I may have to try this next time I'm on a bus. With a bit of luck I could make a few quid on eBay.

There is surely nothing worse than being pooped on by a deranged flock of pigeons

The bus was about to leave. Just as the doors shut there was a sudden knock on the glass. The bus driver sighed and opened the doors. An old man stepped slowly onto the bus. Sandals with socks, long straggly beard, blue mackintosh, more plastic bags than a bag lady on an exceptionally productive day. And when I say "slowly", imagine an ageing snail travelling against the wind.

He gently relieved himself of his plastic bags, carefully arranging them along the aisle. He rummaged through them, we sighed collectively, a bitter and despairing sigh. Even the chubby kid looked up angrily from his maths homework. The bus route had already been wrecked by the spectacular incompetence of a leading gas supplier. At every stop dizzy college girls delay us as they fumble for the change that they failed to get ready WHILE THEY WERE WAITING. Imbecilic drivers do their best to ruin our day. I don't let these things get to me. And now this? I'd have more fun being pooped on by a flock of deranged pigeons. Guess I picked the wrong day to give up sarcasm.

Stooping, drooping, his shaking hands fumbling, he searched for something as we looked on in horror. The bus was now five minutes late and it had not even started the journey. For several minutes he rummaged, (chubby kid went back to his maths) eventually pulling out a leather-bound book. He slowly unwound the binding cord. Round and round, round and round, a bit like the wheels on the bus, apart from the fact we WERE STILL STATIONARY. Good job I've been working on managing my anger. My patience is legendary. He flicked slowly through the book, finally removing his bus pass.

"Sorry love," said the bus driver, "you can't use that pass before 9."

What followed was the most painful exit I have ever seen. Rummaging, fumbling, dithering, mumbling. He slowly gathered his bags, chatting to the bus driver all the while. He chatted about this, about that, discussed that one and the other one. "About what?" you ask. I have no idea. The bus driver begged him to get off. We were running late, she pointed out. He commented on the weather, mumbled about the other one again, and something else, and this and that. The infernal wagging of his beard infuriated all of us (apart from the chubby kid apparently).

After much coaxing he stepped off the bus, bags and all. We emitted a collective sigh of relief, there was still a possibility of not being too late. Of course if the gas supplier and college girls had their way we would still grow old on the bus. He turned and stepped back inside. We shuddered collectively, anticipating a vicious loop of death whereby we all died trapped in the bus as this old codger shuffled on and off for eternity (watched by a deranged flock of pigeons no doubt).

"Cheerio," he said merrily, gave the bus driver a wave and shuffled away.

The Conservative Club (another oddball in military gear)

Rick and Libby climbed the stairs noisily, dumped their shopping in the aisle and sat at the front of the bus. They seemed oblivious to the world around them and in particular, the young man a few seats back, scribbling frantically in his notebook. Libby took the front seat, rummaged in her bag for a few seconds, pulled out a ball of wool and started knitting. Rick sat behind her.

"Ugh, Libs your neck just clicked," he said, and then began to massage her neck.

After spending six years commuting by train to London, for the next two months I'll be getting the bus. The transition is like crossing the Rubicon of sanity. The train, though not without its fair share of freaks, weirdos and gimp-grandchildren, provides a relatively normal experience in comparison to the mad house known as the bus.

An Indian man sat to their right. He was speaking on the phone very loudly, very fast. Libs shot him an irritated glance. She wore thick-lensed glasses, the lenses so thick her eyes appeared as tiny specks.

Rick was another one of those army fruitcakes, an overweight balding man clad entirely in camouflage gear. Frank Skinner once said that anyone wearing more than two badges is a nutter. Rick had more badges than a festival junkie.

"Leave me alone Rick," said Libs, "you're hurting me." "Yak, yak, yak," said the Indian man. "I'm not gonna hurt you Libs," assured Rick, with a touch of genuine disappointment in his voice. He reminded me of a disgruntled gorilla, not that I've ever seen one or for that matter would want to see one.

An old man got on the bus, we had to wait for a thousand years as he climbed slowly up the stairs. Two stops later he pressed the button, millennia flew by as the bus waited for him. He climbed down the stairs backwards. Slowly, painfully, his joints creaking (I imagine). The madness of it all, the effort he went through for a couple of minutes on the top deck.

Rick and Libs' shopping fell down the stairs as the bus turned a sharp corner. I was that close to bursting into wild, hearty laughter. Rick went after it, the moment was pure comedy. He could be heard scrambling about downstairs like a pig let loose in a grocery store. The rustling of plastic bags, the sound of tins rolling with the motion of the bus, the muffled curses as he stumbled about. When he finally returned all seemed forgotten, once again his hands found themselves on Libs' neck.

"How's this?" he asked. "Leave me alone, " she whined, her needles still clicking away.

I was fascinated by this mundane scene. Where were they going? A council estate? A working men's club? Down the newsagent to buy some lottery tickets? On route to buy a 300 inch plasma TV that they cannot afford? Who knows? I'm not one for stereotyping. They got off the bus and walked straight into a Conservative Club, of all places. If those guys are Tory we're all in trouble. The Indian chap watched this intently, he looked as surprised as I was. The world is a strange place.

I descended the stairs prepared for carnage, fully expecting to see broccoli scattered about, a dented tin of beans perhaps, or a puddle of milk by the priority seats. Nothing, just a suspicious-looking group of pensioners and a couple of schoolchildren. Rick, to his credit, had cleaned the whole lot up.

Never Trust Anyone in a Hawaiian Shirt

I know, I know, a rare flurry of mid-week activity from the "I'll only post on Mondays" Blogger, but I'm guest posting at Pseudo's place today, please go and pay her a visit.

The Soldier (and farewell Sass)

I dedicate this post to the fabulous Sass, the girl who taught me to blog. Not for its relevance, it is just my way of saying thanks and goodbye. She said her goodbyes to the Blogosphere last week. If you haven't already, pop over there to say farewell.

The motion of the traffic soothed my soul, a soul in tatters after missing the bus. It was all rather picturesque really, traffic dancing along to the dreary tunes on Starbuck's play-list. I sat there nursing my damaged sensibilities, sipping a coffee and scoffing a so-called “breakfast panini”. A skanky breakfast panini, and it cost me three quid too, which in the grand scheme of things was a kick in the teeth. But I was hungry enough to pay. Besides, I had half an hour to kill.

The door swung open. Not violently, not gently either, but firm, forceful, purposeful. A soldier strolled in. I say soldier, what I mean is some bloke in full camouflage gear who may or may not be a soldier. Army boots, bulky hiking rucksack, one of those army caps that made his head look like a tin can.

Cool, I thought, there are only two of us in the café and one of us is a soldier, a real man. Or was he? It dawned on me that he was a tad old to be a soldier. Home Guard, perhaps, but he was blatantly over 50, probably pushing 60. A colonel, possibly, but he had no stripes, no sign of rank. He did, however, have an incredible moustache, one which would have driven Lord Kitchener mad with jealousy.

He had a swagger abut him, not an aggressive “I could thrash you using only my pinky” sort of a swagger, but rather a careless nonchalance. His age and nonchalance gave me doubts. He was either a nutter or a colonel without his stripes. (I use the term “nutter” lightly, not for one minute forgetting the phenomenal toll taken on our troops.)

He ordered his coffee, and as he stood there James Blunt came on. The tiresome, ubiquitous James Blunt, the man whose dreary whining haunts us everywhere we go. The soldier starts to tap his feet, gently creasing one knee as he croons along, on his face an expression of intense ecstasy.

Tell you what, he can't have been a soldier. No soldier worth his salt would tap feet to James Blunt.

The Dirty Tissue That Broke My Spirit

I know you are fed up of the same old same old. One grumpy twenty-something-going-on-ninety-something tirelessly recounting commuting stories. One long drawn out moan. Well tough. The things I have to put up with.

When I got on my train home today there was only one seating area unoccupied. Following protocol (of course) I chose not to invade the space of others and commandeered the free area, despite the fact that the table was covered with trash. It was as if the entire Von Trapp family had been there, with an enormous entourage, and scoffed a feast of cheap travel food before leaving the remains in one collective act of (G20?) defiance.

I was knackered. A week of crazy long days at work. Getting home late then working in the evenings. Busted my back playing football. Creme egg prices going through the roof. And now the aftermath of a Von Trapp family scoff-up.

An old man burst onto the train. He was one of those people that, when they get on the train, you shudder inside and think no, not here, not opposite me, pleeeeeeeeeeeease. He was out of breath and crashing about with a huge rucksack, one of those spatially unaware people that simply should not be allowed to carry bags of any form.

He stumbled into the seat opposite me and knocked half the trash onto my lap.

"Thanks for that," I said politely. I wasn't in the mood for some random miscreant to knock half-eaten Von Trapp chicken legs onto my lap. Maybe that was overly harsh of me, I felt a little awkward when he apologised. I chose to ignore him, the trash and my now skanky trousers, and quietly read my paper.

A few minutes later the old man took off his coat. A grubby, well-used tissue dropped out of the sleeve and landed on my lap. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was the dirty tissue that broke my spirit. I got up and scurried away, thinking of the hot bath and beer that I would have when I got home.

Hot baths and beer, just a few of my favourite things.

Indefinable Tranqulity

The squirrel sat on the bird table stuffing its face full of nuts. An obese wood pigeon waddled around below. Indefinable tranquility. Nature at its best, a thieving grey squirrel and an overweight pigeon.

Bang.

Squirrel and pigeon flee for their lives chased by my wife's granddad, shuffling after them brandishing his air rifle.

Welcome to Yorkshire.

The long drive up was soul-destroying, although this was to be expected, with most of the trip spent on England's two worst roads, the M25 and the M1.

The M25 is the World's worst motorway, a playground for the World's worst drivers, gibbonoids who should never have been granted a license, gimpgrandchildren whose driving experience should have been halted when at the age of three they crashed their little plastic buggies into beds of stinging nettles, loathsome incompetents who inflict moral and intellectual damage on the rest of us.

The M25 is exhausting to drive on, you don't just have to be on your toes, you have to exercise the extreme levels of concentration required by a surgeon performing a triple-heart-bypass operation on a flea.

At least the flea would be anaesthetised, unlike the brainless oafs that appear out of nowhere and force you out of the fast lane with the imbecilic recklessness of a four-year-old on a sugar high.

And then there are the insouciant drivers who stubbornly stay in the middle lane, otherwise known as "road hogs" or "middle lane morons". The Highway Code is simple, keep left unless overtaking. Rather than suffering from a simple venial lapse, these canaries spend their lives cruising the middle lane, encouraging undertaking and needlessly forcing you to overtake in the fast lane. You overtake in the fast lane, only to be forced out seconds later by some gimp hitting 100 mph in a Merc.

Transit vans are the worst, pulling right up to your rear bumper in that contemptible way that only transits do, they then overtake, before cutting back across all lanes at the last moment. To be fair, it's not that surprising given that most transit drivers have the mental age of nine. To borrow from Wodehouse, if a transit van driver's brain was constructed of silk, "he would have been hard put to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.”

Fortunately I'm such a patient, graceful sort of chap, so none of this bothered me.

***

The phone rang. My wife's granddad wearily got up and shuffled over to the phone. "It'll be another bloody call abou' creditors", he moaned.

"Ah don' 've no creditors," he yelled down the phone. "Now bugger off!"

Like I said, welcome to Yorkshire.

The Empire Club (just a bit of mundane Sussex life)

Stumbling through the doors of The Empire Club with the dishevelled instability of a newborn giraffe, and finding myself in a foyer with two possible exists, I ploughed through the obvious one. Expecting the familiar smell of beer and the comforting sound of the Spurs thrashing Burnley, I was met instead by the foul stench and soul-destroying sound of the unfit, grunting and panting to trashy pop songs. It was probably an aerobics class, but I left too quickly too know for sure, it could have been anything, a Britney Spears mick-take group for example.

The other door took me to the bar.

The Empire Club is one of those random places for which there is no word to describe. A bit like a working man's club, but not quite, certainly nothing close to a pub, but can't be called a bar either. An anomaly.

It took me a few moments to spot Paul and Steve, sitting in the far corner looking uncomfortable, looking like two lads sitting in an anomaly.

I can't remember why we chose to watch the game at The Empire Club, there was some sort of connection between the club and Steve's work. I had to be signed in by a bloke called Ray, and had to pay a quid for the night. How funny is that - a quid?! I asked Steve who Ray was. Dunno, maybe he owns the place, he said.

As we sat there we were closely watched by the regulars, a motley crew of grizzly old men who stared at us with small badger-like eyes, as if we were unruly ferrets invading their hole. Old men are terrible starers, and if there is one thing they hate more than anything else it is change. Who were these young whippersnappers, destroying their same-old-same-old by simply being there?

I always enjoy seeing these two. We reminisced about old times, like when they sneaked out of the Evening Star with one of the ale festival awards, only to return it a few weeks later (in equally sneaky fashion). And the time when they got their car stuck in the stones on Brighton beach after a night DJing.

Paul is leading a colourful life, one which I'm fascinated by, though not envious of. He is spending his time flitting between here and the USA where he does youth work for a charity. Now here's the interesting bit. His charity work is self-funded, so he spends a several months back home saving up for the next trip. He does a menial job two days a week, proving a small but stable income, but the majority of his earnings come from online poker tournaments. To maintain his prolific poker activities he subjects himself to a rigorous fitness regime and healthy diet - to keep his mind sharp and prepared, never gambling if he is tired or has had a few drinks.

I sipped my precious pint slowly - precious because I was driving and it could be my only one. Arundal Gold, a fine local beer. When I left the old men glared with intent, their badger-like eyes watching from behind their Fosters. Old men always drink Fosters, which I can't respect, and can find no explanation for.

I decided to give the aerobics class a miss on the way out.

Old men and their shorts

Entering the gym I was hit by the beat of the 80s. An old man was rolling around on one of those giant rubber balls. I've never been sure what those things are for, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But what is it with old men and their shorts? He was wearing a pair of "old man" shorts - you know, those tiny shorts with stripes up the side that only marathon runners and old men wear.

This old man was brilliant, some day I'll emulate him. When he wasn't rolling around on the rubber ball he was doing step-ups, perfectly in time with the 80s anthem in the background (I imgane he'd done this routine before), his crazy white hair towering magnificently.

Every now and then he got out one of those "squeeze and squirt" cleaning bottles, and wiped down the apparatus, including things that he had not even used. To be fair to him, he was probably assuming that some sweaty monster had previously used them. Come to think of it, he was probably assuming that I was that sweaty monster.

When he left he took his 80s anthem out of the CD player. I already knew it was his. He even put the radio on for the rest of us. What a great bloke. He reminded me of a retired partner of our sister company, a 70-year-old with shingles that beat me at squash. I decided that enough was enough and gave up squash.

The funny thing about gyms is that there's always some awful radio station blaring (Heart, Kiss...), yet everyone in the gym is listening to their ipod. At least this old man brought his magical 80s anthem and was letting us all know. And there's always one of those rowers. You know, the guy who is on the rowing machine when you arrive, and is stll there when you leave, rowing, rowing, rowing. The annoying thing about these rowers is that they tend to be bored, watching everyone else. I wish they'd point the rowing machines at the wall.

The other day we were down the Duke, when an old man burst through the door. He was wearing the tiniest pair of "old man" shorts, and tucked in to them was a checked shirt, fully undone. Nice. He was carrying a pool que, and forced his way into a bar billiards game that was already running . The lads that were playing were furious. I won't be emulating his look but if I ever fancy a game of bar billiards and can't be bothered to wait...