Ever get the feeling that life is just one spirit-crushing, face-slapping calamity after another?
I was ambling happily along Camden High St on my way back from lunch today, running the usual gauntlet of heroin addicts, charity muggers and Kestrel drinkers and dreaming lazily of nothing much in particular, when I skidded wildly across a particularly fruity patch of ice and landed squarely on my coccyx. As I writhed limply on the busy pavement in mixture of agony and humiliation, roundly ignored, stepped over and certain that my stock could sink no lower, a long shadow loomed over me and I was finally offered the assistance of a passing good Samaritan. This everyday hero? This guardian angel with a sturdy gait and rippling forearms like hocks of ham….?
A grey-haired, hunched lady of at least 90 years. With a walking stick. And outdoor slippers. How utterly and hopelessly degrading. Humiliation over, at least……Not so! Once I had clawed myself to my feet, clinging pathetically to her BHS anorak, it became quickly apparent that a group of unruly local youths had gathered ringside with the express intention of laughing at me. Loudly. And pointing to draw maximum attention. And shouting incoherent abuse. And possibly filming it on their phones. It was hard to tell in the red-hot fug of total embarrassment. Have you noticed that the freckled, cheeky n’er-do-wells of yesteryear have morphed into a herd of crack-fuelled, malicious little sh*tsticks not satisfied until they have, at the very least, sliced up some poor innocent with a blunt and rusty Stanley knife. What ever happened to nipping over the garden fence to pinch a couple of mouldy apples from miserable old Mr. Miggins? Or postman’s knock? Or setting fire to your sister’s valuable collection of Beatrix Potter books?
Thanking the generous, and now possibly quite self-conscious old lady, I scurried and skidded away, keen to retreat to the sanctity of my office, a cockle-warming brew and a medicinal afternoon on YouTube, only to be met with yet more peels of laughter and mocking invective. In the name of Satan’s burning crotch, what had I done to deserve such further cruelty? The large, muddy damp patch swelling handsomely across the seat of my trousers gave me my answer, it making me look, no less, like some frantic, howling escapee who’d shat is undercrackers in some sort of filthy protest now that the heavy sedatives were wearing off. Brilliant!
Forced to make my way back to my desk by edging slowly through the streets with my back to various walls and fences like a midnight peeper, once returned I contemplated removing my strides and drying them on a radiator. However, the added humiliation of appearing like the weird kid who defecates himself on the school trip and has to spend the rest of the day sitting on the minibus with the dinner ladies, in a pair of borrowed yellow Y-fronts, was just too, too much. So I just sat there like a damp, muddied, red-faced tit.
Just thought I’d share this with you. To get it off my chest, you see. And possibly brighten the end of your day.
Happy New Year, folks! Happy New Year! x
