Friday 15 October 2010

Call me Hercule

Lately I've been experiencing a lot of coincidences. Today it reached the stage where I decided that they're not coincidences and are in fact connected by a universal strand meant for closer examination.

Yes that's right!! A MYSTERY TO BE SOLVED!! Oh doesn't that just spark a deep and dreadful excitement in the gut?

So first let me give you the back story, bring you up to speed on the whole operation before we move forward:

Some time last year, while I was still unemployed, drizzling around the house in my over-sized pyjamas with feet too cold and a look of deep space glazed on my vacant face; yes at some point during that year I managed to make it out of the house for a visit to my favourite high street media vendor where I bought a copy of I <3 Huckabees. Really strange, confusing film!! I've watched it twice and still find it difficult to keep up. Anyway, if you've seen the film, you'll know that this purchase and subsequent viewing of mine was the first coincidence, though of course I didn't realise it then.

Anyway, then I started work. As anyone who reads this blog with any continuity knows, I ride the bus every day to and from work. Obviously a lot of the same people get on the same bus as me, so seeing them every day isn't that big a deal. This will however become more significant as my story unfolds, so bear this in mind: I get the bus with the same people most days; I know what they look like; I notice if they aren't there. Okay, got that? Good.

Most days when I'm heading to work I get off at the far end of town so I have a fifteen or so minute walk down to work to clear my head and prepare me for another monotonous day of treachery. At some point, probably around May/June of this year, every day when I got off the bus, I would see a tall man in a pale blue shirt with white hair and a black beard, carrying a rucksack. A fairly distinctive looking man to most people, let alone an obsessive person spotter like me!

The first time I saw him, I obviously thought nothing of it, other than, "Wow, what white hair he has; so striking against that rugged black beard." Then, on another day, I was catching the bus home and I saw him again. This time he was at the opposite end of town. Fair enough, perhaps he's like me and likes to walk through town for some fresh air.

The third time was more significant - I saw him on my lunch break. I was starting to wonder if I'd bagged myself a stalker, but decided that couldn't be the case since he didn't seem to register my presence at all, even though I stared at him so intently every time he might well have burst into flames. That or he was just a really good stalker and is in fact hiding in my wardrobe right now...

...shudder.

Anyway, I kept seeing him. Pretty much every day for three whole weeks, There are a lot of people in and around Leeds and for me to see the same stranger every day for three weeks convinces me even further that this was no coincidence.

For the next part in the saga we need to go back to my fellow bus users. I get on at a stop near my house every morning. Three stops later a man, always dressed in a black shirt and a black and white stripy tie, gets on. He looks like a normal guy. HOWEVER he had black hair, PEPPERED ENTIRELY SYMMETRICALLY WITH GREY HAIRS. His voice is also really girlish for a man. Traits of an evil mastermind? Well stick with me, my theory is coming, slowly but surely...

The third and probably most significant base fact I want to give you, are details of the black shoes I've been seeing everywhere for the last two weeks. Seriously, everywhere I turn there's a single, shiny black shoe lying there as if it's been kicked off in a mad scramble. It's always one and they're always in the weirdest places: the middle of a road; stuffed in a bush; tossed in a field full of horses. It's so strange. And sinister.

Still awake? Excellent, here comes my sewing together of facts and follow up theory!

Probably about two weeks ago, around the same time I started seeing all the shoes, the castrato didn't get on the bus for many a day. The bearded man also disappeared. I haven't seen him for an AGE. Having seen him so often for so long, I was obviously worried.

Then, tonight, when the castrato boarded the bus and immediately fell asleep, and I saw another black shoe in the bus station, it all fell into place! THE CASTRATO MUST HAVE MURDERED THE BEARDED MAN AND THROWN ALL THE SHOES HE OWNED AROUND LEEDS AND THE SURROUNDING AREA SO HE WOULDN'T BE DISCOVERED!

THAT'S why the pepper haired man was so tired on the bus today! I could barely contain my terrified excitement at having struck upon this theory. Oh good God, I thought, what should I do?! Oh I know, I'll write a blog about it, logging my suspicions and vowing to keep my audience gripped with any further information I uncover over the next few months.

So there you have it, a real life mystery, signed, sealed and delivered avec verdict. I mean, obviously I can't be 100% certain I'm right, which is why I won't go to the police until I have something physical to show them - I didn't manage to pick up any of the shoes and can't very well go up to the man on the bus in case he murders me too; the only thing I really have to go on besides the facts I've presented is the extra strong inkling I've had to listen to ABBA lately...ONE OF WHOM HAS A BEARD :/

As I said, I'll keep all four of my faithful readers posted with any developments. All helpful suggestions welcome. I just want the bearded man found so we can lay his perfectly contrasting face/head to rest if indeed he is dead. However I'd also like to say,

"Mr Whitehairbackbeard, if you read this, please get in touch, I'm worried about you and think you've been murdered."


Let's just try and keep one another safe guys. And if you hear a castrato singing out a ditty in your ear, I'd like to know about it straight away.

Peace out, Napoleon.

Friday 8 October 2010

Lines That Don't Collate

Well! Never have I more seriously considered lobbing my apple core at 'yooman bean! There I stood, waiting patiently for my bus, next to a lady who very well looked as though she was queuing for the same one as me.

I saw the bus on the approach so I got out my Pass of Extortion and waited for it to pull into the stand. There were several people in front of me, so I was in no rush to cut in front of the woman. I turned to her and said something along the lines of, "Why good day to you, lady of a similar politeness and social decency level as myself, art thou waiting for this here omnibus?"

Before she had chance to respond, a large turd with legs was pushing its way in between us, making for the queue of people in front of me! So shocked was I, I blurted out something along the lines of, "Erm, HELLO?" avec Ricki Lake hand/head gestures of indignation.

The turd had the turdy audacity to turn its turdy head and say, in it's stinking turd voice, "Oh don't worry about it! Take your time!" with a large intonation of turd-flavoured sarcasm, as though the bus had been there for five minutes rather than the five seconds of time that had passed in non-turd reality. The doors hadn't even skittered open yet!!

Boy-o-boy did I push past him as quickly as I could! No doubt my coat is stained with his turdish demeanour, but justice simply had to be done :/

He proceeded to sit in front of me on the bus and only then did I recognise him as the very same turd who used to get on the bus every morning and practically sit in my LAP, casting his turdflakes about the place like some grotesque carver of faecal matter, and was, in turn one of the reasons I now cram myself into the not-made-for-tall-people individual seats at the front of the bus every morning. Hence my longing to throw my apple core at the back of his head.
I refrained though; I figured it would only result in a horrible smattering of turd flying all over the place.

I sat wondering what on earth this country is coming to, letting actual piles of crap with legs ride on buses, when Jimmy McSmokes got on with a lady friend.

Jimmy McSmokes is a guy who must be about my age, but probably has the lungs of a 90-year-old miner. I'm guessing this from the STENCH of smoke that comes off him every time he boards. With no exaggeration intended, he must smoke literally one million cigarettes a day. It's as though his rather fetching wee tracksuit is made only of lit cigarettes.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Jimmy for that, he just disappoints me. And he lived up to that disappointment yet further today when he sat with a paper bag full of DVDs; like ten of them or something. He went through them all and picked the price sticker from each one. When the sticker had been removed, he threw it on the floor. Then he took the DVDs out of the recyclable, paper bag and threw that on the floor too.

Oh Jimmy McSmokes!! You were homeward bound! Do you not have a bin there? One made of cigarettes perhaps? Or could you not have held onto the bag and the stickers and put them in the bin that is...oh yeah, right next to the stop where you got off?

The most pathetic thing about it was that he didn't even look like he was doing it with any malicious intent. I think he thinks that where rubbish goes.
SERIOUSLY, where is this country GOING right now?!

Ahhhhh fuck it! I'm going to chisel out a grain of sand to live in. Have a little poem why don't you?

Photographer

Take the camera out of my face,
I know you're lying to me -
those eyelashes aren't even yours.
And get out from the curtains;
my grandmother hung them
and if I find one footprint...

I've seen you, with your courderoys
and your meat-blood eyes
and I don't trust you.
How old are you?
Timeless, is it?
What're you going to do?
Photoshop me into outer space?

You aren't a wizard,
you'll never remove the reflection
of your face in my glassy eyes;
everyone will know it was you,
even if you are hiding
at the other end of a darkened tunnel.


NB Yes, these stories are indeed trivial, but hey, I'm just trying to raise a smile or two. :) <<< there's one, so I'm halfway there, riiiiiight?