Daesins Monster

So here is the scene on the first truly hot day of the year, when grey and grungy London is transformed into a Mediterranean idle. This van, perhaps encouraged by the Australian-esque heat of the morning, pulls outside our shop and there stays for most of the day.

No big deal you may be thinking, as did I at first, but as the morning trickled by and several cappuccinos later, that quiet, mumbling voice in my head was a little bemused. 

A man with a van, makes sense, I thought. It must be nicer to have a man drive and help shift all your stuff when moving. Since moving house is my least favourite thing to do ever, and I’ve somehow managed to do it 7 times in the last three years (yes 7!), it seemed like a better idea by the second.

But why….I pondered, an Aussie man & van? What is it about an Aussie man that makes him a preferable man to have a van than any other man, a Welsh man for example, a Japanese man?

Perhaps it is that new world muscle. I must admit, Antipodeans do seem to have more than their fair share of beefy looking blokes, most of whom look as though they only narrowly missed out on a career in international rugby. But then, there are other nationalities who can boast physical prowess, Canadians for example.

mmmm…..well… Aussie’s  are a fairly pleasant bunch, with their sunny dispositions and their ‘alright mate’ charm. They also have that way of saying “ahhh yeah” that is simply impossible not to try to mimic.

That must be it. You are just about to ask an Aussie man with a van to shift your second grand piano up four flights of stairs, and in your best Hugh Grant you apologise, “Oh I’m so sorry, it does look terribly heavy, but you did a marvelous job with the last one”. The best response must surely be a cheery, “ah yeah……she’ll be right’.

That’s it, I resolved, the combination of muscle and charm found readily available in London’s platoon of Aussie males must recommend them above all other people as the perfect man with a van for all your moving needs. Perhaps people have known this for years and I was just the last to catch on.

Then, just as I was enjoying the comfort of my new found appreciation for the Aussie man with a van, that very man came into the shop, perhaps a little smaller than I was expecting and  wearing a t-shirt to prove his status. Viewing this as a serendipitous moment to test my new theories I asked the Aussie man with a van the question I had been pondering all morning,

“So why is an Aussie man with a van any better that any other sort of man with a van?”
His nervous and stuttering reply…”erm….My English….not perfect I’m sorry”, in an unmistakably Eastern European brogue.

“oh”, I say a little deflated

My Polish colleague confirms what already seems plain, “That man was very Polish”.

“Yes, yes he was”

So…..as it turns out an Aussie man with a van might just be a Polish man with a van. Now I don’t have any problem with a Polish man with a van, but unless I’m missing a trick here, a Polish man with a van is not an Aussie man with a van, and I’m back to feeling confused again.

Perhaps I should just stick to making cappuccinos.

Over the past 2 or 3 years I have become a regular passenger on Londons mighty fleet of red buses. There is of course many things to be said about traveling on London buses but in this post I want to focus on one particular aspect which I was pondering only last night.

I almost always travel on the top deck of the bus because as everybody knows the bottom deck is only for mothers, elderly people and the mentally infirm. I also often sit right at the front, partly because you get to have the rather giddy sensation of being the driver of a very tall car that has no steering wheel and drives by itself.

From this vantage point I have been able to conduct an exhaustive and scientific study of the habits and driving style of London’s long suffering bus drvers.

Here is my first finding:

London bus drivers go through red lights an awful lot.

Now there are many obvious reasons for this, the most prominant being that….well…they can. Bus drivers, not unlike cab drivers appear to be above the law when it comes to something as petty and arbitrary as the highway code. Yet unlike cab drivers, there seems to be a devil-may care recklessness about the London bus driver. All Londoners will have at some point been subject to a driver who has mistaken his 10 tonne double decker bus for a pimped out, turbo charged mini cooper. The result for a passenger like me is several ungracious headbutts of the glass window beside me, as the bus lurches one way and then the next. One’s journey begins to resemble the experince of a cheap, rather unsafe theme-park ride, not as it first seemed a humble commute through South London.

I digress….the point is bus drivers need not fear the punishment normal drivers might face, and believe me, in London there is punishment lurking round every corner. I recall one of my first driving excursions in the big city resulted in a £120 fine thanks to the idosyncracities of the Sainsburys car park exit in New Cross. As I found to my cost, if you want to turn right, you must first go left, and if you want to turn left, you must first go right (go figure!). My naivety was duly punished.

A bus driver does not need to fear such recriminations. He can drive around with the wild abandon reserved for the only the few…….or can he?

After all this is a bus we are talking about. A bus is required to stop at regular intervals in order to fulfil it’s busly duties….right?

So why is said bus driver so hastily making his way through a red light? He is not making his way to any unmissable event, he is simply at work, passing time till the end of his shift.

And let’s not pretend he gives any real regard for the times printed on bus stops. We all know there is no real correlation here and so does he.

Yet the bus driver goes through the red light any way. Because he can. Because he wants to. Because he dosn’t like waiting around.

But hang on a minute (and here, finally, is my point). Hanging around is precisly what being a bus driver involves. Buses stop at…..well….stops. That’s what they do, that’s what they are there for. There is surely a psychological contradiction here.

So a little word of advice for all you prospective bus drivers out there. If you find the prospect of having your daily journey broken up by regular, irritating moments of pause, like say, a red light, a man splayed prostrate in the middle of the road or indeed… a bus stop; perhaps you should look into a different career. Testing rollercoasters perhaps. Ski instructor?

If you have ever been through US immigration you will know what I mean.

I am fairly confident that the US government dosn’t have anything against me. I’m an educated, open-minded citizen (subject really but I digress) of the United Kingdom. I have never been arrested, I’m not a communist, I’ve never visited a terrorist training camp and I consume coffee in the morning not speedballs.

However, face to face with those humourless and officious persons charged with protecting their beloved country, and keeping the unsavoury and undocumented out; I feel like an Al Queda recriuter whose primary traveling wardrode is 400kg of high grade cocaine.

A similar feeling came upon me last Sunday while enjoying the leafy charms of Stoke Newington. Having been totally suduced by ‘Whole Foods’ on my recent stay in the US I was excited to happen upon a tiny version of that same Aladdins Cave of foodie goodness, right here in Blighty.

This also presented me with a handy opportunity to get some cash back since my debit card had simply stopped working in cash machines a couple of days before. Not. so. fast.

I boldly approached the till, clutching my large bottle of organic lemonade (it was half price ok, give a guy a break). I politely asked if I would be able to get cashback. ‘Yes’, I was told, as long as I had I.D. Oh yes, I don’t carry around a driving license for nothing, I thought. Not. so. fast.

Unfortunately ‘Whole Foods’ of the UK is apprantly the only retail establishement in the land that dosn’t facilitate the use of chip and pin. My card was therefore duly swiped, only to be rejected. The cashier then, rather reluctantly, punched in the (long) card number. No joy.

‘Your card has been declined, and umm… the card isn’t signed.’ she says wearily and not a little suspiciously.

‘oh yeah but that’s cos ….um….chip and pin..you know..err….usually…..oh forgot it’, I huff.

‘do you still want the lemonade then?’

Sheepishly, ‘erm… no, I’ll leave it’

I havn’t felt so deflated at a checkout since I was turned down buying beer at Walmart cos I had a UK driving license, and looking a full ten years over the legal age wasn’t quite enough.

So the moral of the story is this: sometimes you just feel sketchy, even when you’ve done nothing wrong.

And ‘Whole Foods’, I think you should adopt chip and pin now please. You don’t want to be left behind by those tech-savy ‘Big Issue’ sellers.