The zombie in my anecdote

So I've officially hit middle age - I bought this book yesterday, this football book by Martin Flanagan, and I had to put it down after about 6 pages. The reason was there was just hundreds and hundreds of spelling errors and mis-printed words (at one point the Bulldogs are said to be playing like "Men on a missing" - honestly!) but I figured that the fact that my enjoyment of a book was spoiled by spelling errors (I think I need a highlighter and his address) finally, surely, completely finishes my descent into middle age. However, I realise that I'm not exactly captain grammar and punctuation, but this isn't a book where hopefully a proof reader is emp...see, I can feel peoples eyes glazing over, but now I'm 30, I'm finally able to express my disgust at such things. I have a friend - I don't know if I've mentioned this before, he sent me a text message once when I was going to see Ross Noble and it said "come meet me for a drink!" - the presence of a ! and the word drink meant I thought he wanted a nice boozy lunch, and so instead of driving to see Ross, I got a lift into the centre of the city and was ready to go through my ritual of being kicked out of pubs nice and early. However, when I got there, he had a hot chocolate waiting for me, with a star made out of chocolate flakes floating on top. Back then, I was probably thinking gee, what's all that about, I wanted a beer but now I think, well, what's wrong with a nice cup of tea! I saw this girl yesterday being all moody in the middle of Kingston, being all young and discontented in her Grates T-shirt, goth eyeliner swamping her very soul, hands in her pockets, hair long and shaggy. She loitered zombie like against a red railing, no doubt thinking about words for her journal. Apart from wanting to swap MP3s with her (I finally got an MP3 of He's Kissing Christian by That Dog, at long last) my main thought was when I was moody (cept I was rocking a moody tracksuit - represent y'all) and young, an old woman came roaring up to me outside Roelf Vos and said "Cheer up! It might never happen!" and I said "It already has, I've got puliminory obstruction" (a disease I made up) and she backed right off. Now, I was the one to go over, and tell this total stranger to cheer up, if I was going to fully embrace my new found age rights...so I sidled up, smiled and said "See this book! You should see the spelling errors! Men on a missing! He's supposed to be a professional writer"...

Obviously I didn't do that. If I had, I might as well have said NOT at the end of an aggreable sentence or done an Austin Powers impression for the up to date cultural relevance and youth I was showing. Instead I kept on walking, down the hill, past the little van that tries to pretend it's not a speed camera. It's been sitting there for about three weeks with it's indicators on, so it's obviously a speed camera. Some kids run past shouting "Death to the speed camera" - two girls come up to me and ask about how I walk. This completely confuses me, and I resist the tempation to say "Well I put one foot in front of the other..." - however I'm struck by a completely awkward thought. I'm now in someones anecdote. I hadn't considered that if blogged about the girl in the Grates T-shirt, she might somewhere be blogging about me (although my self analysis of her suggests a green penned journal with a lock on it), the weird awkward looking Scottish guy in the St Mirren shirt (or worse "ZOMG some old dude!"). I was suddenly quite self conscious, and thought, I wonder if the time I fell on my arse in the cafe has been recounted with whimsy at a dinner party - I slipped on a wet floor and hit my head, but got up really quickly, embarrassed at people looking at me - I know the time I spilled my drink twice on the same IPOD (of a bouncer no less) is recounted in certain circles as if I had written Shakespeare. As this thought swirled through my head and I continued my self conscious walk around Kingston, past the ghost of Tracks Music where the really cute girl would smile at me as she put up Powderfinger posters (I like to think ironically) I see the same girl in the Grates T-shirt, and she clocks me, and looks instantly awkward. I suddenly realise I look like I'm following her, and I change direction. I'm definitely in a journal anecdote tonight, I think, as I drink my bottled water with a nervous intent. The Grates fan then goes to go in my direction, but stops, not because of me, but because her hair is in her eyes. She instantly stops moving, and retreats back into zombie mode, the only flicker of life a twitching left foot that won't stop flickering. I am on surer ground when I turn the corner, and an old woman in the health shop is arguing about vitamins. She sees me, and tilts her head back, smiles, and then continues her argument, something about price or stock...she looks like she has whiskers, but I can't imagine she will remember me ten seconds after I'm gone...her argument tails off into the sky, like skywriting, all the information scattered in the wind. She puts the vitamins down, and then walks off into the distance, head held high as if she'd accomplished something. She tilts her hat in the direction of Tracks Music, and gets smaller and smaller in every way as she heads out of my line of sight. The response of Grates girl is to say or do nothing, and in Cyber Hair, the futuristic hairdresser of the future, a child with big ears is getting a bowl cut. With nothing but concern for myself, I get my paper quickly and leave, by now sure someone, somewhere, in this bizarre instant opinion world, is using me to fill blog space...I'm onto you big ears...

Of course, my Dad, if he had a blog, would fill it with anecdotes about me - the time I came out of a swimming pool change room with both my tracksuit top and bottoms on back to front, and when he challenged me my response of "Nobodys perfect!" - I think he only had me to laugh at me sometimes. He's quite open about that. In fact I just asked him on the phone if he had me just to laugh at me, and he said "Well, you sure obliged!". My Mum prefers one liners, like the time her Mum said in response to one of her other daughters telling her that she bought a lovely looking roll that she should "go and enter it in a beauty contest!". My cousin died two years ago, and he was 39, and his family quite openly talk about him every single time you meet them, as if he's going to come through the door at any minute. We went to dinner with his family, and they just were hell bent on keeping him alive, any way they could, and when I ordered a Chicken Kiev they had a story on that as well. Whenever I tell a story about someone though, I do sometimes think about the context that I place them in - it's like when I see the grumpy woman from Banjos who I think hates me because I'm sort of vocal if anyone cuts in the line in front of me, and she's not working, she's holding a kid in her arms, and she's playful and tender. I think about the RACT driving instructor that I called a cunt because he basically told me I'd never pass my driving test while I couldn't keep up with traffic (said traffic was doing 90 in a 60). Does he use me as a cautionary tale to younger students? And what's he like at home? Nice? A horrible person who beats his kids? Dead on the couch? The values I ascribe this man might be totally out of place. Nah, he was a cunt - he was racist against Scottish people. Or Liverpool supporters. Never really sure. I can see him and his little withered old face, hunched over a projector, talking about "the student that never could"...snapping out of this thought bubble, I see the girl at the newsagents impatiently waiting for me to register that it's my time to be served. She's fidgeting with a pen, and pouting. "So," I say, sarcastically, "happy at your work?" - she doesn't respond, stating price, quantity and serial number, before happily serving a Richard Hawley lookalike behind me. To her, he is memorable, and I am a number in her day. Then she drops her pen as she try to look cool and tap it off her teeth seductively, and I smile, for I know from experience no one ever looks cool or seductive with a pen - nobody...kids, they'll learn...

Confused by the nature of the world and my place in peoples storyline, with thoughts all over the place, I walk home, clutching a DVD of Tim and Eric. I'm convinced by now that somehow, somewhere, Ive influenced someones day, even just by walking around and buying things, that somewhere I'm recounted on someones blog. As I walk, again convinced I have a magical power to make cars come out of driveways just as I walk across them, a small Japanese girl in a "Be Yourself!" T-shirt is walking down the road. She looks around, and then leaps onto someones lawn and steals their newspaper, and then unwraps it. She doesn't see me, but she's really pleased with her theft, and the owner of the house will never know what happened to his paper. My pausing to watch her causes (of course) a car to back out of a driveway and nearly run me over, the kid in the back seat of the car looking up from his PSP and matching my grumpy stare with a return spazz face. In the midst of all this, my IPOD starts playing Intastella, an obscure Manchester band that a girl I was friends with got me onto to, or I got her onto, one of the two. I can see her sitting a blog, or in a pub somewhere, talking about me - talking about the party that was all going horribly wrong, someone caught cheating on someone, the person who was being cheated on taking it absolutely to heart and having to be talked down from the roof, someone who attempted to crash being forceably thrown out and locked in a car, me drunk on wine talking about how awful Friends was and why did no one see things from my point of view. I can see her, setting the story, like she used to do, getting more and more detailed, until she got to the point that to cheer herself up at the party, she told a fundamental Christian (who she wasn't kissing) that in fact, I had serious self doubts about the value of my own life. So he took it upon himself to tell me that Jeebus loved me, putting his hands on my shoulders and telling me the value of existence. And when I looked over his shoulders, I could see her, laughing and waving, looking beautiful in the party spotlight, the only person smiling in the chaos. She tells it better than me....and I hope she still does.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Kingston, a goth girl is putting the key in the lock of her journal and....