The Little Triumphs Of Idiocy

Another ordinary day of working from home.
In theory.
Have to admit, after my dalliane with Klingon sluttery yesterday, I was a bit nervous to wake up and find an email telling me I'd have to go to the Post Office again, this time to post some Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I mean, invites to go drinking with a wannabe Klingon are one thing, but I'm damned if I'm getting the finger from a fake Freddy.

Now, as it happened, I had to do something else in the wider world today. Had to take some money from one bank account and put it in another. Nothing dramatic, just the kind of thing that helps smoothe life out when you have a first-of-the-month, with its attendant bills, disguised as a Bank Holiday.

So I went to the Post Office again, but plenty of people appeared to be panicking about the Bank Holiday - the line extended out of the door, as far as the road and then some. I thought about joining it, but by the time I got there, I was in a bit of a time crunch - you see, I know it doesn't sound like a complicated business, transferring money, but here's the thing - my main bank appears to operate from a base in the nineteenth century, and has only four or five branches in the UK. If I wanted the money to transfer smoothly and in time, I'd have to go and see them personally. Fortunately, they have a branch in Canary Wharf, a short tube ride from home. So, no problem there - I only needed to get to them before 3PM. I went through the barriers at Stratford and went to the Wharf. Pulled out the card from my other bank and made to withdraw some money.
"Nope" said the machine, spitting out my card like a mouthful of mayo. I tried again.
"NO!" it shouted, spitting again, this time with the petulance of a toddler made to eat stewed spinach.
Now, this was tricky. It was the first time I'd used this particular card, it was a replacement for one that expired last September. I tried to find the bank's website, looking for a local branch to go and talk to about why the card didn't work.

Guess where the nearest branch was?

Yep, that's right, it was back in Stratford. So I went back through the barriers, and walked to the branch. Waited in line for a while.
"Any idea why my card doesn't work in the hole in the wall?" I asked the bored, overworked woman behind the counter.
"Wrong card," she said simply. "We should have sent you a new one last September."
"Yeah, you did," I said, "this is it."
"Errr...no, notsomuch," she said.
"Yeah, honestly. I still have the old one in my wallet," I explained. "Look." I pulled out the old card.
"Yep," she said. "That's the one."
Ut took me a whole handful of seconds to understand the simplicity and the idiocy of what had happened. I'd had two cards in my wallet, the old one and the new. I'd automatically assumed the one at the front was the new one, and, when it didn't work, nothing about the experience clued my brain in to try the other one. So I'd schlepped all the way back to Stratford because, when it comes to it, I'm that much of an idiot.

Anyway, I got the cash, and went back through the barriers at Stratford, heading for the Wharf again. Got there at 3.05. Deposited the cash anyway - like I said, it's not urgent, just important, so it'll work just as well. So I went back through the barriers one last time and headed for home.

And as I was coming back through the Stratford barriers, it hit me. Something was different. I'd been going back and forth for three hours, with barriers at both stations. And something was different.
Regular readers will remember a little while ago, the hilarious incident of my getting stuck in a turnstile at Hammersmith station. You won't be surprised then to learn that it's become a learned instinct when approaching tube station barriers to turn just a little sideways, and slide througth that way. But today, I didn't do that. Not once. And that was wonnnnderful.

It's a tiny slice of normalcy that you get numb to, and then pretend to forget, as a fat fuck. I'd actually had another wave of this feeling actually at the Wharf, when passing an expensive off-the-peg suit shop.
"That'll be a day," I thought to myself. "That'll be a landmark day, when I can just walk in off the street and get a suit." It reminded me, queasily, of the only time I've ever tried to hire a tuxedo. There's a store here that hires out this kind of outfit, called Moss Bros. I walked in, and said "Do you have-"
"Oh, I hardly think so, sir," said the rakelike shop assistant. I felt so furious it burned, but the humiliation burned more and I left the store.

Clawing back those tiny slices of normalcy, of...acceptability, somehow, is as much a series of landmark as the stones and pounds I'm losing. I said this to d when she got home, and it was something with which she could identify.
"Yeah - I've been sitting in normal tube seats, and not feeling squashed," she enthused. (Tubes now have 'normal' seats, and seats with an extra third to them, which we habitually think of as 'fat seats', and which we've made it a point, previously, to seek out).

So yeah, I schlepped back and forth needlessly today and made myself late for my 19th century bank. But the little triumph it gave me was worth all the schlepping. And so much more.

For those still following, my blood was 5.9 this morning - a little elevated, but probably explicable by the fact that I've had cereal breakfasts for the last couple of days. Nothing to sweat over, I shouldn't think. Not on a day like this.