Think about it: how many little tube misteries have you come across lately? I'm sure there are thousands.
It took me a couple of months to eye-witness that there is really a train that serves Heathrow Terminal 4; that was my first one, now solved, but there are still a few things I can't explain. People, for example; too bad that the profession of Human Nature Observer does not exist.
I'm impressed, for instance, by all those girls who can put on their makeup in the short lapse of time that separates one station from another. With one hand, that's easy, but on a moving train? I'd end up painting my face like a clown, if I tried.
On Monday there was this woman, sitting opposite me, and she was using an eyelash curler. On a rolling, tumbling, trembling carriage: how come she wasn't screaming from excruciating pain?
Let's go back to torture instruments, then, I beg you. I'm sure a cilice would hurt less.
Not to mention the chicks you come across at night: fasciate in flashy, glittery dresses as long as my sweaters, constantly without tights despite London's freezing cold, hoisted upon heels which lift them to the troposphere. Let's leave vulgarity aside - I respect you, girls, really. I can't picture myself walking home from the station when I'm sober, fancy after a night of heavy drinking.
But my favourites, indeed, are those who read the news.
Yes, Ma, I know, we dooooon't dooo thaaaat. But come on, cast the first stone if you never threw a glance to your neighbor's paper - or waited eagerly for him or her to get off the train and leave it behind, for that matter.
I remember the Metro from the glorious time when I still pretended to be a business student - there was no such thing as an early morning class, just because we could hope to come across a paperboy on our way to university, and make those sitting behind, who had not been privileged enough to get their own crossword, green with envy. It was difficult, mind you - the only truly engaging thing the paper could boast, actually.
But Londoners are way ahead than us little provincial peasants: they have the Evening Standard, after all. (yes, if you ask, that crossword is pure hell). And, surprisingly enough, people who pay for The Sun. Take the Asian grandpa I saw one morning: all absorbed by the two-page article he was reading, and what was it? A feuilleton about a woman who was sterilized at twenty-three after the third baby, and regretted not being able to have the fourth ten years later. Are we serious?
Today, while I was heading to the library, half-asleep and frustrated by a morning of useless errands, I jumped on the tube, and there it was. A brand new Metro, right on the seat I had spotted.
Headline news: Libya. Well, not bad, huh? Let's have a look at the featur...
...oh, wait. No Gheddafi here, just an article about Smokey, the cat with the loudest purr ever: an adorable, peculiar meow that sounds "as if she had a dove stuck into her throat". (by the way, many thanks to the owner, for such poetic image).
Page two. Two. I thought that we Italians were masters in the art of useless news, but this is pure insanity.
Well, let's take it for another little new something I learnt, together with "never engage yourself again with the challenge of giving up on coffee" and "off-licences don't sell any decent puff pastry, so move your lazy ass and go to a proper supermarket if you want to avoid another depressing lunch".
Tube misteries are still too many to solve,but at least I can feel glad for having a normally-sounding cat.
(on air: Blur - Girls and Boys)
