Guardian All Ears 8th August

Couldn't resist the 'We Will Rock You' bus because of recently being obliged to walk past the hideous gold Freddy Mercury statue on Tottenham Court road & thinking that I'd rather have my teeth pulled or get gang raped by badgers rather that sit through that dross...*shudder*

(Article by Michael Holden)
Some people become so disposed to talk about themselves that even when they are discussing something else, what they’re really saying is about them. The mobile phone though has elevated self-referential drivel to a higher plane. Nowadays you hear people giving blow by blow commentary on the stupefying minutiae of their existence while-and this is the truly staggering part-someone on the other end of the phone pays attention. I was at a bus stop with a crowd of people the other day when a teenage girl started yelling into her phone while endeavouring to stare down the rest of the queue by sporting a look of complete hostility that suggested looking back at her might be a fatal mistake.

Girl “It’s the same argument. I go into the room and say something and she says something to me and then I walk out and then she calls after me and then I go back in there and tell her what I think and then she tells me to fuck off.”

She circled the bus stop like a foul-mouthed, polyester planet and when she passed me again she had moved on to the subject of exactly what was happening to her.

Girl “I’m at the bus stop. Waiting for the bus. I can feel the air on my face, the wind like, I don’t mind it. It ain’t too hot. I can’t see the bus. Oh God, I’m just waiting for the bus now, how long can it take for the bus to come? ”

She made another orbit and, as she returned, succeeded finally in catching someone’s eye.

Girl “Oh my God there’s a man looking at me, he’s fucking looking at me!”

This led to other people looking at her, a fact she effortlessly absorbed into her self-obsessed yodelling.

Girl “Now they’re all looking at me! What the fuck is wrong with people? Where’s the bus. The bus is coming! I’m gonna get on it. The bus is coming now!”

It came and she went upstairs. I stayed on the lower deck and felt old.

Guardian All Ears 14th June

(Article by Michael Holden)
As far as I’m concerned people who are up out of their aircraft seats before the seat belt sign has been turned off are a sub species that ought to be destroyed. Within that though, skulks an even uglier demographic, people who get out of their seats too quickly, and immediately begin to use the phone. If any of these people looked like they had anything urgent waiting for them outside the aircraft, other than their own demented self obsession, it wouldn’t be so bad. Likewise the vocal among them, have nothing to say. This proved itself to be true again last week when I watched a young woman get up and start bleating loudly into her mobile at the end of a long haul flight from California.

Woman: “There were a lot of history, too much history really. It were quite boring. We saw Hollywood and that…yeah…went to Vegas, stayed at the Luxor. It’s like a pyramid, a black pyramid that you go inside of.”

I prayed for her to be admonished by a steward but no one came. And so she continued.

Woman: “I got her a solar-powered key ring, it’s pretty good…and I got him some nails scissors…nail scissors that have ‘California’ written on ‘em…”

The light went off and everyone started standing up.

Woman: (anxious, as though this might be an affront to her unique status) “Everyone’s standing up! Yeah, I’m still on the plane. It’s hot over there. You can get sun burned in an hour. I did…I’ve gone brown now though. Yeah, I got him an ashtray.”

As she moved out of earshot I realised that whoever said travel broadens the mind wasn’t catching many planes.