Handing Over The Neon Sign

If you read yesterday’s entry, you’ll know it was one of Those Days – those days when Weird Stuff just randomly happens to me.

Well, I’m here to tell ya – it didn’t stop with weird questions and shibilant Asian guys. At the end of the day’s work, I was schlepping home from Greenwich to Ipswich. Got on the Tube at Cutty Sark, pushing through a ratlike crowd of tourists that had decided they’d had quite enough of watching an old sailing ship being restored. Got myself a seat on the Docklands Light Railway back to Bank. I was listening to the final chapters of Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman on the iPod (heartily recommend this in any format you can get your hands on, by the way – funny, thought-provoking and-- )

“Scuse me Sir,” said a lanky, granite-faced train guard, looking down at me as though I’d been left there by an incontinent wombat. “Can you step out here please?”

“What?” I said, pausing Caitlin in the middle of a profound dialectic on why Katie “Jordan” Price is the Anti-Christ of Feminism – I’m not sure we didn’t already know that, but still –

“Now, please...” he sighed.

I stepped over the bloke who’d taken the aisle seat next to me, apologising as I accidentally dangled my ear-buds in his cup of tea...

Note to self – clean ear-buds more often.

Once I got out into the door space of the carriage, the lanky guard seemed to unfold his backbone, and grow another mean, sharp foot of height. If I tilted the brim of my cowboy hat, I could have pretended he didn’t have a head.

I seriously considered it.

“Do you have a habit I should know about sir?” he asked.

Ahem. There’s not a man on the planet who won’t look shifty if asked that question by a stranger in a tabard. Come to that, there’s probably not a woman who won’t, either.

“Erm...” I said, thinking about it.

“No?” I tried.

He raised both eyebrows at me – like me, he was one of those comedically-hampered individuals who can’t physically raise one eyebrow. We have to raise both, and end up looking either ineffably curious about everything in front of us, or like we’ve just scored some seriously pleasing Class-A drugs. Or possibly, in certain circumstances, like we’ve just sat on an unexpected pineapple.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yyyyyyyes?” I said, exploring my answering options.

“Not a habit of being...forgetful at all?”

I looked at him, raising both eyebrows imploringly. Dude, seriously – gonna need a point here before one of us dies, I tried to convey. It’s not an easy message to convey with an eyebrow-wiggle.

“Forgot to touch in, didn’t you sir?”

I should explain – this is not as perverse as it sounds. At some Tube stations now, there are standing monoliths that look a bit like radiators with attitude. Rather than slow everyone down by making you all go through turnstiles or proper gates, you’re supposed to touch your Oyster card (a pre-paid travelcard, for the non-Brits), on the panel of these e-guards at every station at which you either join or leave the Tube system, so you can be electronically charged for the journey.

“Ah...” I said, trying to remember where the e-guard had been. All I could remember was lots and lots of people.

I wanted to say “Dude, gimme a break, my dad’s not well, I’ve got Man-Flu, I’m trying to get back to Ipswich and I’ve just sat through three hours of historical presentations, including one by a shibilant Asian dude...seriously, you’d have laughed when he said “city”...”

What actually came out of my mouth was:

“I...I...I don’t live here any more. I’m Welsh...”

He raised both his eyebrows even further at me. They were threatening to become a second hairline.

“Where’d you get on?” he demanded. This confused me even further. I wanted to say “Look dude, you knew I’d forgotten to touch in before I did, presumably you know where I did it!”

What actually came out of my mouth was:

“...”

Where the Hell had I got on?

“Ship!” I said. “Y’know...” I made long, banana-shaped gestures with my hands, trying to describe the keel of the ship being repaired at...at...y’know, that place! It occurred to me as I stood there gesticulating at the man whose eyebrows clearly didn’t get around very much that this was unlikely to support my case that I didn’t forget things.

“Y’know?” I said, trying to push my brain into a corner where it would have to remember. “The big ship-repair place. With the anchor and...and...stuff...”

“Cutty Sark, sir?” he said, as if carrying Jupiter on his shoulder.

“YES!!!” I yelled. 

Don't yell. Not ever....

 “Thhhhhankyou....Yes, Cutty Sark...that place...that’s the one, yes...”

“Automatic penalty,” he sniffed. “Forty pounds...”

He made me give him my name and address. Ever tried to spell Welsh place names to a granite-faced Cockney train guard who really doesn’t like you?

Don’t. Just lie. Lie, lie, lie again – say you’re from Bath. I would have, except the Oyster Card is linked to an online account, which meant the system already knew who I was. Which at that point was more than I did.

“Right,” I said when he’d torn off the fine slip and shoved it at me. “So they’ll send the fine out to me, will they?”
He sneered.
“No sir, it’s up to you to pay it. You’ve got 21 days or it goes up to eighty pounds.”

“Then...” I gulped. “Then...why did you make me give you my name and address?"

“If you don’t pay, they’ll sue you,” he said, sneering. He might not have been able to do the sarcastic solo eyebrow-raise, but he did a world class sneer. In my brief experience, he got a lot of practice in.

Then he bogged off. I looked back to my seat. Some bastard had nicked it while I was having a mental meltdown.

“I’m a Welshman,” I muttered. “Get me out of here...”

I didn’t end up getting to Liverpool Street until gone 7 o’clock. Pushed through the properly-signposted barrier (just sayin’), and was schlepping along Platform 10 to get to my assigned carriage on the Ipswich train.

Suddenly, another man took my case out of my hand, and walked on ahead of me. I blinked.

“What...What?”

“That looks heavy,” he said with a smile.

“Err....yeah,” I said. “Can I have it back please?”

He stared at me. Doubt seemed to cloud his face.

“Is it you?” he asked.

There is, I discovered, no right way to answer this question unless you know the person who’s asking it.

“I have absolutely no idea anymore,” I told him honestly. “It’s been one of those days...”

“Oh it’s not!” he realised suddenly. “It’s not you!”

“If you say so,” I agreed. “Erm...can I have the case?”

“Oh God yeah – sorry, that must have been weird!”

“Depends,” I said. “It’s really been one of those days...”

“You’ve got a doppelganger,” he explained.

I blinked at him, and we both stopped walking, halfway down Platform 10.

“Really?” I asked him, incredulous. For those who need a reminder, I was wearing the pin-striped Master Suit, my big cowboy hat, and had been carrying a pilot’s flight bag at the time, looking pretty much like Wild Bill Accountant. I also had a slightly growing-out beard, a robust thicket of 40-something-bloke nose-hair, oblong glasses and a slightly rabbit-in-the-headlights expression, having clearly regressed into a Welsh comfort-zone in the last three months.

“Yeah!” he exclaimed. “He even wears the same hat as you...”

We began walking side by side again.

“Wow, that is weird, even today,” I acknowledged. “Case?”

He handed me back my pilot case full of laptop and other assorted electronica.

“He’s called Ian Grady,” he said, over-extending the encounter somewhat, I felt. He stared at me again.

“You’re really not him? Not having me on?”

“I’m so not,” I assured him.
“Weird,” he said again.

“Yeah,” I agreed again. This was getting awkward. I had a feeling if I said nothing, he’d invite me out for a pint any second now.

“Well,” I said. “Erm...thanks for the case.”

“No problem,” he said, still staring at me, shaking his head in wonder that there could be two Ian Gradys in the world.

“Erm...I said, reaching the door of my carriage. “OK, well, if you see Ian....” I shrugged. “Tell him I said hey!”

“I will, I will...” he said, waving as he carried on down the platform.

As I settled into my seat, I shut my eyes briefly. I wondered whether I could, if events had happened slightly differently, have passed my fine off onto Ian Grady, whoever he was. Probably would have given it a go, if I’m honest.

Be grateful for small mercies, I told myself. Could have been worse. He could have told you you were a dead ringer for Ian Brady, that would have completely sucked.

Ian Brady, for those who don’t know – which again means the non-Brits – was a notorious child-murderer in the 60s...I’m not even sure he’s still alive, and if he is, he’ll be dying in prison. Having him as a doppelganger would have sucked Satan’s ass. After all, if I’m gonna double for a serial killer, it would probably be John Wayne Gacy...maybe Arthur Shawcross at a push...

By comparison, today has been jussssst peachy. Simple, straightforward. No fines, no mental strangers on the street, so shibilant Asian guys, no doppelgangers inspiring people to nick my stuff.

As I write this, I’m on a train up the Valley, coming home to a place that now makes much more sense to me than my old city does. Here, I feel like my neon sign saying “Approach me now, mad fucks!” has an off-switch. Or at the very least, that I can pass it over to d, who has yet to engage in a conversation with anyone – I mean anyone: Tesco checkout girls, haberdashers, curry house waiters, customers at her job, anyone – that doesn’t go something like this:
d: says anything.

Stranger: Where’ewfrom’en?

d: I was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up in New York State, little town called Westfield, just south of Buffalo, south of Niagara Falls.

Stranger: Wha’yewdoin’yearthen?

d: My husband’s a Merthyr boy, I came over here to marry him.

[Optional extra if I happen to be with her]

Stranger: (looks Tony up and down incredulously, as if to say “Seriously? You came here...to marry this? But you’re American! You come from the land of George Clooney. Surely you could have done better than this?!) Lovely...Awww, Wha’s New York like ’en?

d: I don’t know, I’ve never been there.

Stranger: (frowns suspiciously)

d: New York City is about a 12 hour drive from where I grew up.

Stranger: Really?? (gives d a look as if to say “Not got much ambition, have you?” – despite the fact that most of them have never been further than Bristol)

d: Yeah.

Stranger: (refusing to be put off) Looks lovely on the telly, fair play...

d: Hmm...Can I have my change please?

So far, my wife’s novelty status is still stunning the locals in this town, and she’s waiting for the day she becomes a recognised fixture in the town centre – they’ll call her “The Nice American” probably, knowing d. Personally, right now, I’m just waiting for home, and bed, and remembering what I do for a living when I’m not doing Ian Grady impressions.

Back to the gym and swim tomorrow, and a good long walk on Sunday, Dad’s health permitting – which, I’m given to understand, it is. Positive stuff happening in the Valleys, you see...

(Scurries under a train seat till it stops moving and I can go home...)