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The Barbershop Chronicles
Every time I go into my local barbershop, strange things happen. It’s a Turkish barbers, so you get the full works. Warm towel round the face, brief and underwhelming arm massage, ear hair set alight. The flame seems to get bigger as I get older. On the last occasion, the barber took an unusually long…
The Reservation
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m sorry to inform you that we’ve run out of quiche. I repeat, there will be NO quiche available from the buffet car for the duration of this journey.’
And people wonder why we should re-nationalise the railways.
The Break-in
‘Mummy, I heard a noise’
Not this again. When Michael’s at home, she sleeps like a log. But when I want to get a good night’s sleep? There’s always something.
The Phone
Everything is exactly as it should be.
People in seats, looking smug, avoiding eye contact with new arrivals who are old, pregnant, or have a crutch. Others in the aisle, thrusting groins and armpits into the faces of those seated
The Benefactor
It’s summer. There’re tourists. And they’re everywhere.
Tourists with their over-sized bags, exploiting a luggage-shaped loop hole in the ‘stand on the right’ request.
The Visitor
Another normal day, another normal commute, and I’ve got my normal standing spot by the bin-seat, a useful substitute for when my legs start to give way should one of those very-rare, nearly-never-happen, but-when-they-do-they-take-ages delays occur.
The Race
The announcer’s voice acts like a starting gun for the well-dressed, middle-aged, suited-and-booted office workers piling through the ticket barrier.
‘Ladies & Gentlemen, the train now approaching platform one’
johnJsills 