That, readers, is what I would say
if I was a hopeless pessimist. Fortunately for you, I am not.
Every day, stories blossom around
us. The threads of life we wade through day by day can be spun into epic yarns.
Fire up the imagination drives, and crack open the seemingly mundane – there’s
always a tale inside.
The following are a selection of
short and relatively insignificant encounters that, despite their minor nature,
contributed to colouring my day:
The Case of the Humming Tinkler
So there I was, early for a
history tutorial, minding my own business in the history, classics and
archaeology department, when Mr Bladder informs me he needs to do his stuff.
Off I hobble to the nearest gentlemen’s room, undo my zipper, and answer
nature’s call into the urinal, as would any right-minded man.
Suddenly, in bursts a youth about
my own age, about my own height, and in a similar predicament to myself just
seconds earlier. He shuffles up nearby (It was a small men’s room), unzips –
And starts to hum.
And when I say hum, I mean hum. For the next fifteen seconds, he
composed a tuneless symphony, which the thrumming brass of piss-on-porcelain
its ambient underscore. Shamelessly, he turned a casual toilet break into
nothing short of a magnificent concerto.
I left the men’s room, unsure
whether I had been disturbed or uplifted by what I had just witnessed.
Either way, every time I visit
that set of urinals, I remember the Humming Tinkler, and the as-yet unmatched
whizzing-soundtrack he shared with me.
The Case of the Malicious Pigeons
Marching down the Meadows on a
sunny day is one of the blessing of Edinburgh. Recently, that illusive ball of
blazing gas decided to rear its head over Alba, and everybody was out to make
the most of it.
Unfortunately, that also meant
that everybody was there to witness the following.
A flock of pigeons – twelve
o’clock.
It’s fine, I told myself, eyes happily squinted in the sunlight, They’ll move.
I trudged on, preparing to
meander between a pigeon or two if need be, but ultimately certain they would
shimmy out of my path.
Unfortunately, Edinburgh pigeons
are accustomed to human company. So accustomed, that is, that they have gained
a sense of superiority over those foolish bipedal monstrosities that toss their
leftovers to the ground so casually.
I reached the pigeons.
A moment of calm. Beady little eyes on cold, unreadable faces swivelled my way.
And then the pigeon typhoon was unleashed.
Seemingly hundreds of pigeons
blasted my way in a flood of panic and feathers. My warm-Meadows-day coolness
vanished as I screamed and flailed in instinctive terror.
Finally it abated, and I emerged
from my huddled position to see a sea of confused faces – human faces – looking
my way.
And that’s when I realise:
pigeons may be small, but all that means is they’re easier to underestimate.
And that’s just what they want
you to do…
The Case of the Pink-Lipped Alcoholic Reporter
Recently, I managed to nab a
really decent interview for the university’s newspaper. The interviewee was
pretty high profile, and I spent ages obsessing over the questions I would ask
him, how I would pace my voice, how I would introduce myself etc.
The interview would take place
shortly before he did a talk in front of a big audience about diplomacy and
crises and all sorts of terrifyingly important stuff. I obsessed over timing
here too, as I had plans to meet some friends that night – if the talk ran to
schedule, I’d be able to watch the whole thing, mill about at the wine
reception for ten/fifteen minutes, then head on my way.
The evening would run like a well-tuned clock. Surely.
The interview went well enough
(Although at one point I enunciated a bit too violently while asking a question
and watched in horror as a fleck of spit sailed through the air towards the
interviewee’s suit. It just missed, thankfully, and he didn’t notice. Although
I think he was slightly concerned at the terrified glint in my eyes and the
blood rushing to my face, come to think about it...), and the talk was
interesting. My Dictaphone didn’t malfunction, and I managed to control my
sweating enough to not dissolve in front of him.
Then came the wine reception.
I was swept along to the table,
and found a glass of red wine in my hand. I am not a red wine drinker. Mind you, I thought, I don’t normally strangle myself with a tie or dilute my accent so the
people around me can understand my proletarian dialect, so I’ll just go with it
this once.
I was half way through a
conversation with an elderly lady who had helped found a swanky pan-continent
institute and chuckling internally at how she must have assumed I was somebody
important, when I had a glance at the clock.
“Sorry, I’ve got to go!” I
yelped to the startled mid-sentence woman, spinning and scooping up my jacket
and notebook.
I still had half a glass of
wine, so tanked the lot and bolted for the exit.
On the way, the important
interviewee appeared in front of me. For the sake of professionalism, I stopped
in my dash and thanked him profusely. I wondered vaguely why he looked so
terrified…
Then I left.
It
wasn’t until I reached my friend’s flat, and somebody asked me “why is your
mouth bright red?” that I realised how horrifying I must have looked as I left
that reception.
Red wine is really, really red,
I learned that night. My lack of appreciation for that fact, and my instinctive
need to embarrass myself when I realised I was running late, just go to show:
we can try to cover up who we are as hard as we can, but in the end the real
you will always break free.
Unfortunately, in this case the
‘real me’ was a clumsy, blissfully unaware bundle of fluster.
So there we go, three
encounters, interactions, and observations that make me laugh and cringe to
reflect upon. All three were events that I reflected on a while after they had
happened, and all three proved to be better stories than I had assumed at the
time.
I usually end up with some moral
or conclusion in my blog posts, and here you’ve been treated to four, as
tenuous as they are. Firstly: Humming while having a whizz in public may break
from social norms, but sometimes shattering societal expectations or harmlessly
transcending decorum is all you need to make a stranger’s day. Secondly: Don’t
assume that somebody will move for you just because they’re small. They might
fly at your face and humiliate you. Thirdly: You can wear as convincing a mask
as you like; your true face is bound to reveal itself eventually. Possibly
sweaty, oblivious and smeared in red wine.
Finally:
Stories are everywhere, every
day. When we begin to appreciate them, we realise how much we actually see and
do as we casually navigate our lives.
Every new day is a blank whiteboard. Grab a
marker and start scribbling.
An example of scribbling
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