Cocktails and Records

A story in this week’s episode of the radio programme/podcast This American Life tackles that age old conundrum: Which superpower would you prefer – the power of flight or the power of invisibility?

The reporter behind the story, John Hodgman, seems to have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time examining this very question. He’s researched the issue over many years and has now compiled a vital analysis of people’s responses.

His findings reveal that most people know instantly which superpower they would choose, almost as though they have been pondering it all their lives. This rings true with me. As soon as he mentioned the options I knew that I wanted to fly.

He then goes on to point out that absolutely no one actually wants to use their superpower for fighting crime and saving people from collapsing buildings as superheroes are supposed to. No, mostly they want to use them to spy on ex’s and work colleagues, perve at other people, nick stuff and get to pub quickly. Exactly. I want to fly because I want to feel the cool wind rushing through my hair, enjoy the view below me and never have to encounter mustard and banana loving commuters ever again.

So what about you – flying or invisibility? And what are you going to use it for?*

*Analysis of people’s decisions also suggests that choice of superpower says a lot about your personality. Allegedly. But lets not go there. Just because I dream of the power of flight doesn’t mean that I’ve got some kind of guileless, show off, hero complex alright.

You may remember that some months ago I encountered a big fan of the humble banana on a train journey. Well, yesterday I had the (mis)fortune to meet his evil twin.

Again, I had innocently boarded the tube and settled in for a quiet journey in the company of a book. There was only one other person in the carriage. He was sitting diagonally opposite me with a plastic supermarket carrier bag on his lap and a bread knife in his hand.

Needless to say, my interest was piqued.

My fellow tube traveller reached into his bag and casually pulled out a slice of loose white bread and a jar of Colman’s English Mustard. Evenly, thickly and smoothly, he carefully spread the mustard across the bread before proceeding to eat this mustardy morsel in a couple of happy bites.

Not being a huge fan of mustard myself, I struggled to stay immersed in my book. I desperately tried to ignore him as he smacked his lips and reached into the bag for another slice. But try as I might, my nose wrinkled and my stomach clenched as he smothered an even thicker layer of mustard onto this next piece of bread.

As the carriage filled though, fortunately so did his belly. After two more slices of mustard bread and a quick lick of the mustardy knife, he put the remains of the Colman’s jar back into the carrier bag, got off the train, and left me in mustard-free peace.

So this really begs two questions:

1. Is the solo mustard sandwich a frequent occurrence that I just haven’t met until now?
2. Why do these things happen to me?

I know that Oscar Wilde once made some comment along the lines of ‘The most frightening sentence in the world is the one that begins with “I had a really interesting dream last night”‘, but forgive me because I’m going to indulge myself…

I had spent a good hour or two last night combing the internet for some background information on various local candidates and wasn’t getting anywhere. Incomplete CVs, unexplained party politics and general spin prevailed. I went to bed disgruntled and my sub-conscious quickly took over: it was now Thursday morning and time to vote.

So I rolled up at the local polling station only to discover that all of our usual candidates had been mysteriously de-selected, disqualified or disgraced.

‘Don’t worry’ said the chipper election official to the growing crowd of disgruntled voters, ‘Rod Stewart has volunteered to be your MP instead.’

Murmurs ran through the crowd. We turned to each other and shrugged. Why not? Perhaps he’d get The Faces together again for a jam at the local pub? None of the other parties could do that.

Sadly I woke up before I could find out whether The Faces did play the Standard. And it was with a certain degree of resignation that I dragged myself off to the polling booth this morning to vote for the usual suspects.

Happy Election Day everyone.

Lots of people are of the mistaken opinion that I am a chilled, laid-back and accepting kind of person. This is completely and utterly not true, and here is the proof.

I recently had to take a 40-minute journey on the tube. This did not bother me. Although the tube is not the most pleasant place to pass time,  it is a good opportunity to immerse oneself  in ‘a good book’.

So I settled down and all was well for a while. Well, until precisely the next stop where a man, a deceptively ordinary-looking man, got on and sat opposite me. He had an old supermarket bag which he placed on his lap. This should have warned me – ever since I witnessed a seatside fight between a cinema-goer and a rustler at the National Film Theatre, I have been weary of men and plastic supermarket bags.

But I digress. This supermarket bag was full of bananas. And the man proceeded to take one out, peel it and eat it, all the time gazing straight ahead into the middle distance behind me. This was fine. He wasn’t staring at me. And he was after all, just a man eating a banana.

Then he ate another. It was at this point that I noticed his Keith from Nuts in May eating style – that kind of slow, methodical, thoughtful chewing where you just know that he is carefully counting the correct number of chews in his head. And still he stared straight-ahead at that mysterious point just behind my right ear.

By the third banana, my skin was beginning to creep and by the fourth, all attempts to concentrate on my book were drowned out by an intense desire to shove it down his throat and choke him with it.

I didn’t wait around to see the fifth banana. As he pulled it from his bag, I leaped to the door and defiantly turned my back on him and his stupid, bloody bananas.

Later, I told my sorry tale to a friend. ‘But’ she said reasonably ‘he was just eating bananas. What’s wrong with that?’. ‘It was the way he was eating them’ I explained. ‘I thought that you Australians were meant to be laid-back.’ was her puzzled, yet completely irritating reply.

She is lucky that I didn’t have a banana on me as I know where I would have placed it.

I had a horrible dream last night that my parents’ house was burning down. In the dream I ran madly around their home trying to rescue all the things we most cherish – Grandpa’s war medals, treasured items of jewellery, favourite books, seemingly endless shelves of my Mum’s carefully arranged photo albums documenting 100 years of family history.

And as the fire engulfed the Swiss Family Robinson style tree house that they were living in (it was a dream you know), I awoke in a panic desperately hoping I’d got to every single one of those bloody photo albums in time.

Awake and in a slightly fevered state, my mind naturally turned to the location of all the items in my house that I needed to save if by chance, it suddenly caught on fire right now.

1. Passports (I’m not going through the hassle of replacing them).
2. A quilt my mother sewed for me.
3. The excellent present that my Aunts gave me for my 18th birthday.
4. The shoebox of letters and postcards from my nearest and dearest.
5. The other shoebox of old photo negs.
6. The external hard drive back-up with the rest of my life on it…

Digital isn’t romantic, but it sure beats lugging piles of photo albums around.

At a meeting with an architect the other day, we were informed that men and women have different tastes when it comes to the interiors of public toilets and restrooms. Men prefer darker colours, wood textures and dimmer lights. Women like a light bright feel, lots of mirrors and pastels. Therefore, men and women’s toilets should have separate designs and colour schemes.

Our party of women was somewhat surprised by this and curious as to where this wisdom came from. It’s common knowledge, the architect arrogantly replied, and what would you know anyway – how many men and women’s loos have you been to in the same place to compare?

He got us there.

Since then I’ve found myself contemplating men’s toilets. So can someone tell me, are they really dark, woody and dim or is this just a load of bunk?

Here are some facts from the current issue of The New Statesman which may or may not cheer you up this grim Tuesday:

1. There are 1.6 billion estimated internet users worldwide.
2. There are 109.2 million blogs.
3. 99% of blogs have no readers.

But if a blog has no readers, is it really a blog?