What more is there to say?

Everybody else has made their comments about the mindless thievery masquerading as social protest. Not much I can add except to say that the sheer nitwittery of it all can be summed up by the picture in the paper today of the bespectacled wannabe in the knitted tam-o-shanter and the mujahideen scarf carrying his personal proceeds from the looting in Hackney.

A rocking horse.

With broken rockers.

Caption: A moron, recently.

Too good to be forgotten?

Of course, it's not only people I don't know approaching me that cause confusion (see previous post)...

There I was, walking down the Toll Road (the most salubrious location in Harrow), when I recognised a couple walking towards me. Hadn't seen them since 1976. Had been her flatmate's boyfriend for two years, had lived next door to her for a year, had been present on the day that he had moved into the road and met her for the first time.

"Chris? Anne?" I greeted them. "You haven't changed a bit, blah blah".

We agreed that no-one had changed, blahed for ages, they told me how their kids were doing, I told them about mine.

And all the time, I failed to notice that tiny gleam of panic in both their eyes. Not that they only had one eye each, but "all four of their eyes" seems like such an odd thing to say, doesn't it?

So when, having not seen them for 35 years, I then bumped into Chris a week later in Waitrose (do I have any life outside of Waitrose?) and greeted him with "Small world", he had to admit that neither he nor Anne had any idea who I was.

I have noticed them in the aisles of Waitrose a few times since then. As if by unspoken mutual arrangement, we avoid bumping into each other.

Brie Encounter

Walking past the cheese counter in Waitrose, and a voice says...

"Mike? It is Mike, isn't it?"

I admit it. Why shouldn't I? It is true, and I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. Not recently, anyway.
It is a woman of a comparable age, vaguely familiar, who has attracted my attention.
"How are you, how have you been, it's been ages," she continues.
"Yes, but I'm sorry, I can't quite..."
She smiles understandingly, but offers no further clues.
I persist. "I am terrible with names."
She doesn't offer hers.
"You will have to remind me - how is it we know each other?" I enquire.
She continues to smile and keep her own counsel.
"Could it be through the Choir?" I venture.
"St. Mary's?" she responds.
It seems she does sing with a choir. But not the Harrow Apollo Male Voice Choir to which I once belonged. Unsurprisingly, really.
"Did your husband play rugby for Roxeth Manor?"
She denies the existence of a Mister Mysterwoman.
"Phoenix RFC? The Questors? The Open University? Ealing Arts Club? The Malcolm Saville Society? The British Science Fiction Association?" I am grasping at straws now.
She nods reassuringly, as if this random collection of organisations doesn't mark me out at some kind of intellectual gadfly. "None of those," she says, continuing "Wasn't it though Wager Street Social Services?"
"No, I haven't ever had anything to do with the Social Services." (As if!)
At this point my spouse turns up. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"
"Yes, this is.. an old acquaintance. My wife."
They nod cooly at each other.
"Anyway, nice to see you again, we must keep in touch."
"Yes, we must. Keep well."
We walk away and my GLW gives me that look that says "I don't know what you do, but I do wish you'd stop doing it."

And I still don't know who she was...