Late-night bus journey home (London)

My old friend and the most avid reader of my blogs, Valerio, said after hearing about my “Food from heaven” adventure (blog of the same name):  “Here’s another good point of your job: your commuting to and from the pub seems to provide a lot of material for stories…”

Indeed.

When I first transferred to the Wood Green branch of the pub chain, I’d just pull my jumper over my work top after the closing shift, and jump on the night bus — first the N29 to Manor House, then the N253 for the last two stops to my house in Stamford Hill.

On one of the N253 journeys, I noticed the driver looking fairly intently at me as I was getting on, even turning round in his seat and craning his neck at the next stop when I went and stood just out of his direct line of vision.  This freaked me out a bit, thinking he probably fancied me.  

You see, I’d been approached before by men on buses and at bus stops, striking up a casual conversation, starting with asking if I was going home from work, then moving on to whether I wanted to go for a cup of coffee or a walk in the park, but they’d all been earlier: around 9/10pm, a sunny late afternoon for the-walk-in-the-park one.

This level of interest at 3am by the bus driver was a bit too intense for my comfort.  After I disembarked, I dawdled around the bus stop, waiting for the bus to move off, as my house is by the main road, only ten yards from the bus stop, so I didn’t want the driver to see where I lived.  He, on his part, wouldn’t drive off immediately either.  And so, there we were:  each idling at the bus stop, in a kind of a stalemate for a while.  This only confirmed my initial judgement of him.  He’s persistent, I thought, and making his interest very obvious.

The next time, it was a different driver.  This one actually asked, also turning round in his seat and craning his neck, “Where are you going?”  What a strange question!  Why did he want to know?  What’s the matter with all these male drivers, I thought.

Another post-shift night, as I was waiting for the night bus at 3am, I happened to look down and noticed that because I hadn’t taken off my work apron — which had a big pocket in front and into which I often stuffed spare paper napkins for wiping up greasy spills — I looked about eight months pregnant under my jumper.

Penny dropped:  those bus drivers were probably wondering what this heavily pregnant woman was doing, being out and about at 3am.  And an Oriental woman at that too, which is unusual, as Oriental women don’t go gadding about at 3am, even less when eight months pregnant.  

Also, because it was a different driver the second time, he didn’t get to see that I was still eight months pregnant three months later.

I now make sure to remove my work apron when I finish my closing shift.  No more staring from the drivers after that.

(London, 2016)

Update 031218:  Another penny's just dropped (yes, the brain has arrived on the slow bus).  The drivers might've been worried that I might end up giving birth on their bus, hence the level of interest!

* See also "Catching the last Tube train" and "How to expedite matters"

Sanity-challenging conversations: 10 (London)

Six pub customers, who’ve been coming now and again, turned up tonight: three are the social workers for the other three.  

The female social worker said, as I walked past their table, “Can you take orders for our food.”  It was not a question — she was asking me to take their food orders.  

I said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the bar, or order through the app on your phone.  I don't take orders for food.”  

She said, “Oh no, I don’t do the phone app thing.”  

I said, “Then you’ll have to do it at the bar.  I only deliver food, we don’t take orders at the table.”  She said, “I know.”  Huh?!?

. . . . . .

I delivered two dishes to Table 43.  The five occupants said, no, not for them.  The elderly couple next to them said it was for them.  As I put the dishes down, I said, “You’re Table 44, not 43.”  The man said, “No, it’s 43.”  I said, “It’s 44.  Have a look at the disc at the corner of the table.”  He said, “It’s 43.”  I pointed at the disc, he moved his face closer, and said, “It’s 43.”  His wife shook her head.  When I next went back to that area, the man said, “It looks like 77!”  I was quite tempted to say he should get his eyes tested.

Update a week later (241118):  Can you believe it!?!  Customer at Table 77 tonight said the food wasn’t for him.  Eventually tracked down the rightful owner — at Table 44.  He’s a man about 30 years younger than the elderly gentleman above.  Maybe the elderly gentleman from last week sent him to shore up his case?

(London, 2018)

Give someone an inch and they’ll take a yard: 1 (London)

In the last month or so, a woman in her 40s has started coming regularly to the library I spend a lot of time in myself.  She must also have noted the fact that I’m a regular myself, because one day she asked me to look after her rucksack while she went to the loo, saying, “You know me.”

A couple of weeks later, on my Saturday night pub shift, I found her sitting at one of the tables in the raised area, which is out of the direct view of the bar area.  I later discovered the significance of her choice of seating area: she is a homeless person, with a shopping luggage trolley type of contraption all loaded up with plastic bags of her belongings, sitting a bit of distance away from her — presumably so that the staff wouldn’t connect it with her and decide to make her leave the premises.  Out of pity, I didn’t draw my colleagues’ attention to this non-paying presence.  After all, it wasn’t busy at the time, and it was cold outside.

Last week, I was watching a Chinese TV period drama on YouTube on my computer at the library when she asked me to look after her Huawei Tablet.  (So, she might be homeless but she has a Huawei Tablet!)  She said she was going to the loo and would be a couple of minutes, five at the most.  I agreed.

When she came back from the loo, she asked me to mind her things for another five minutes while she nipped out for some coffee, but she was away for ten.

Yes, she openly drinks her coffee in the library, just as the other regulars (a group of Greek, Cypriot and/or Turkish old men) openly and loudly chat in a group around a big round table, treating the place like their local café.  (I have a sympathetic angle on this, as old people can get very lonely, so it’s nice that they have a social corner of their own.) I’d even occasionally found people eating a takeaway in there (ribs and chips, or something equally strong-smelling).  On more than one occasion, I’d spotted a woman in her 50s plucking the hairs on her chin with a pair of tweezers by one of the bookcases as the light there is good.  Another regular — a woman in her 70s with Parkinson’s — openly eats her sausages while doing her crossword puzzles.

This morning, the homeless woman approached me to look after her rucksack again, saying, “Can you look after my bag for two minutes?”  I hesitated, saying, “Umm, I need to leave soon, to go and teach.”  She said, “Just two minutes.”  I reluctantly said OK but stressed that I really had to leave.  She then went and spoilt it all for herself by saying, “Maybe five minutes?”

That was when I decided she couldn’t be trusted.  She had already done it to me once before, saying she’d be gone five minutes but took ten.  (No, she didn’t explain upon return why she’d been gone longer than she said she would be.)  Today, however, I had to go and teach, so I couldn’t afford to be late, especially since it’s a group of three students.  I’m a seriously responsible person:  if I’ve agreed to look after someone’s things, I don’t up and leave when I need to go, even if they don’t come back at the promised time.  She, on her part, doesn’t seem to have the same sense of responsible behaviour.

There’s a Chinese phrase for this:  得寸进尺 dé cùn jìn chǐ / “get inch enter foot” — to go on further to take a foot after getting an inch.

Aesop's "The boy who cried wolf" also comes to mind.

(London, 2018)

Food from heaven? (London)

After my closing shift last night (finishing at 2.35am), I arrived at Manor House at 3.30am to change to the bus for my house.  

There, on the pavement, was a torn paper bag, with most of the contents scattered about:  carrots, courgettes, onions, bananas, apples, pears.  I looked around.  No one about, not anywhere near the bag and its scattered contents, for me to determine the ownership.  So, I started to pick up each item.  

A young man then came along and helped me retrieve them, even from as far away as a yard from the spot.  He must’ve thought I’d dropped the bag, split it, and spilt the contents.  (Oh, split and spilt in the same sentence, fairly close to each other!  That would drive a dyslexic or spoonerism-afflicted person crazy.)  

Luckily, I hadn’t stayed for a post-shift drink at the pub, or he’d jump to another wrong conclusion: that I’d dropped the bag because I was tipsy.

So, I arrived home at 4am, with a bagful of fruit and vegetables out of nowhere.

(London, 2018)

First thing seen upon waking up (China / Toulouse)

One of the episodes in The Heart of the Dragon was about Chinese science, featuring acupuncture, among other things.  

A rabbit’s nose was exposed to a heat lamp, and the time taken for the rabbit to turn away was recorded.  Then, acupuncture was applied to one of its meridian points — the heat-bearing one, presumably — and the rabbit’s nose was once again exposed to the heat lamp.  This time, the rabbit was able to withstand the heat for a bit longer.  The experiment was to prove how acupuncture could take the place of ether as an anaesthetic.  

For the human experiment, an old woman (in her 80s?) who’d been blind for a few decades underwent an eye operation, using acupuncture instead of ether.  Our British film crew went to the hospital to film the bandage-removing ceremony a few days later, to record her first reaction to being able to see again after such a long time.  So the first thing the old lady saw when she opened her eyes were these human beings with big noses, pale skin, hairy bodies and faces, and blue/green eyes.  She must’ve thought, “How the Chinese race has changed in the last few decades!”

Throughout this 12-day visit to France, I was helping an ex-student in Lisbon proof-read a handful of articles on tea that he was editing for a magazine he’d set up (called eighty ˚).  Back and forth, back and forth went the questions, comments and suggestions, sometimes for a few hours in one stretch, sometimes late into the night.  I certainly always checked last thing at night and first thing in the morning to see if he might’ve left more amendments for me to read.

On the day I was flying back to London, I got to Toulouse airport really early.  Sat in front of one of the Departures screens, to make sure I didn’t miss the call for checking in.  Dozed off at some point, and woke up to see the screen saying there was a flight to Tenerife on VOLOTEA.  Couldn’t believe my eyes.  Never heard of Volotea, so I thought I was dreaming after 10 days of reading tea articles!  It turned out Volotea was the carrier — a Spanish carrier.

(China, 1982; Toulouse, 2018)

Singing to animals (Scandinavia / Singapore)

Have just watched a video of a Scandinavian woman summoning her cows with a high-pitched tune.  It’s called Kulning cow singing.

My father used to whistle a certain tune — four notes, his own invention — whenever he fed the crocodiles.  

One day, he decided to jump into the pond to clean it out, instead of doing it in safety from the other side of the low brick wall surrounding the crocodile enclosure, with all the crocodiles having been chased up onto the dry land area of the enclosure.  

My father was enjoying cleaning out the pond so much that he forgot himself and started whistling that same tune.  The crocodiles, thinking it was feeding time, came down from the dry land area and went for his ankle.  His yelling and shouting could be heard from across the road, “You stupid animals!  Don’t you know who your master is?!?”

Four stitches.

(Scandinavia; Singapore 1960s)

The super goalkeeper (France)

I'm staying in a tiny village, St. Amans, in Tarn et Garonne (NE of Toulouse), in a bohemian house.  Three cats.  One dog: Kali, a shaggy black and white dog.

Kali is a SUPER goalie.  

Even as you're adjusting your foot — one tiny fraction of an inch to the left or right; or half circle; or full circle to face the opposite direction — she'll immediately jerk her head and body in that direction, or run around to the other side, in anticipation of your being about to kick the (tennis) ball that way. 

No matter how many times you do this to try and wrong-foot her before you actually kick the ball, she responds instantly and tirelessly every single time, all the way until you actually kick it.  (And after all that, I'm such a useless footballer that the ball doesn't get very far...)

I'm getting one of the housemates to do a video of this and put it up on YouTube. 

Her goalie skills come in useful, too, when catching the figs I've been picking from the two trees and throwing to her, wolfed down in half a second.

Kali is 11 or 12 years old.  Google says, "Depending on the breed and size of the dog, 10 to 12 years is considered late middle age and the beginning of the elderly years."  Wow, a near-elderly goalkeeper, and so sharp as well at that age!

I’ve just realised, as I'm writing this, that Kali is a sheep dog. No wonder! Her reactions to my foot movements are like how a sheep dog would react to the slightest movements of the sheep while trying to herd them in a particular direction or into the corral.

In the 1964 Disney musical Mary Poppins, the nanny invented a word for the children: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I'm now shortening it and applying it to this wonder goalie dog: Super Kali.

(France, 2018)