Today people pissed me off

I had a meeting first thing in Southwark. It’s an easy ‘get to’ from the house in Brixton – about 25 minutes door to door.

The reason for the Southwark thing was to perform accessibility testing prior to an application roll-out. Nothing too arduous, just had to go through a thorough range of keystrokes on a number of terminals throughout the building. And apart from just one PC which threw out a few issues everything went brilliantly.

And the people were fantastic; John, the lead guy in that building, is really nice. I worship the ground that Vicky walks on, and Ernie, Kelly and all of the other people are just too nice to describe!

So how come people managed to piss me off when my first dip in to the work environment was in the company of folk like these?

It’s simple. The people outside of work. Twats.

I was on my way back to my office, standing on the platform of The Jubilee Line (southbound) at Green Park Station, minding my own business, iPod plugged firmly in to my ears – listening to an achingly funny edition of Pets (you’ll have to listen to my Podcast on Saturday 20th September to get the low-down on Pets) when a guy in a dirty Columbo-stylee mac walked up to me. He didn’t speak (I would have seen his lips move), he just thrust a handful of sheets of paper at me and pointed at the place-name ringed in red pen on the front sheet.

It was one of those Journey Planner things, his destination was Wembley Park.

Completely ungraciously and not a little pissed off I switched off my iPod, unplugged my ears, looked him in the face and asked ‘Would you be doing this if I was talking to someone on the ‘phone?’ And do you know what he said? Do you? He said nothing. Not a fucking thing.

Faced with such stonewalling intransigence and being careful not to touch his filthy Columboesque style of clothing I spun him around, walked him down the platform and pointed him through to the opposite platform for the northbound trains where, if he stayed on, he would eventually find Wembley Park.

But in doing this I became completely disconnected from my laughathon so instead I switched to the beautiful Civalias track that’s haunting me at the moment.

Hours later I was standing on the platform at Southwark listening once again to achingly funny things – but this time Scott Mills – when it happened again. First of all a very elderly lady ran right over my left foot with her wheeled suitcase thing (and boy was it heavy! I strongly suspect she had the component parts of a dead body in there). And then a couple of moments later, as I was wiping the flow of tears of agony away, an older guy came up to me and asked me something.

Well no, of course I don’t know what he asked me. I was listening to Scott Mills! He stood there, plainly expecting me to either tell him what he wanted by virtue of my world-renown lip-reading ability or enter in to two-way communications with him through my galaxy-renown ability to read minds and communicate through the power of thought.

Since I actually possess neither of these abilities (yeah, don’t believe the hype), I sighed (again), fished out and switched off my iPod (again) and asked (again) if he’d have done this had I been speaking on the telephone. And do you know what he said? Do you?

Nothing.

My verbal gambit was so unexpected it robbed him of the power of speech. Or perhaps I had scored a direct hit with my first salvo and he realised that yes, he had in fact been an inconsiderate git.

He stood there flapping his lips and making ‘Umm’ and ‘Ahmmm’ (or maybe it was ‘Ahmmm’ and ‘Umm’?) noises for a little while.

I sighed again, loudly, and it spurred him in to action.

‘I wondered if you could tell me where I can get a tube to West End from? I’ve looked on all of the maps and none of them shows the West End station.’

I felt sorry for the guy, cursed myself for being such a grumpy fuck and put him right on the location of the geographical construct of no-fixed-abode known as London’s West End. He actually looked as though he felt very embarrassed. Not because he’d interrupted me, just because he hadn’t known. Or maybe he was embarrassed because he’d interrupted me too. Who knows?

Twenty five minutes ago I was walking through the mean streets of Victoria – iPod on and buds firmly in my ears once again –  listening to some Muse this time – when a small, very ancient old dear wheeled about in front of me, fixed me with a steely glare and said very loudly (I heard her over The Knights of Cydonia!) ‘Excuse me!’

So I did.

I excused her, mentally.

I maintained my pace and rhythm, kept my earbuds in place and stepped around her.

She didn’t like it, the tone of her body language was obvious; she was outraged that I’d ignored her. But what the fuck?

B.