Agnes, Queen of Sorrow
Posted by a Contributor in November's Magazine
If there’s one thing I love (apart from my family and the early, seminal works of Buster Merryfield), it is bus stop chats. These are not like your ordinary stop-and-chats, firstly because you can’t just walk off, and secondly because chatees are bonded by their waiting.
This can often lapse into resentment of a late-running bus, at which point one of you is contractually obliged to use the line: ‘Well, at least we’ll have the trams soon.’ Though a tired topic now, the tram conversation can be made interesting. All you need do is pretend to be completely, passionately in favour of the new system. In fact, now that the works have started again, you take flasks of tea and crates of sandwiches to help those ‘poor, over-worked track-layers’ get through the night. Further, you attend council meetings singing ‘One Jenny Dawe, there’s only one Jenny Dawe’ and ‘T.I.E’s maroon and white army’.
At our bus stop (disclaimer: we don’t own it), I often see an old lady, who we’ll call Mary (she’s actually called Agnes but I want to protect her identity here). Mary is possibly the bitterest person I have ever met. What’s confusing is that she possesses a kind face. Wisdom looks set to pour from the rivers and streams of her oak-aged cheeks; her eyes appear to be a portal into sepia times of simple joys. Then she speaks and the sheer pointlessness of existence froths from within her, a lava of hopelessness coating innocent minds in bilious invective. When once I introduced her to my five year-old nephew, she looked at him and said: ‘You enjoy being that age son, because it’s a hard, horrible life once you grow up’. When a neighbour of ours got married, Mary remarked to me: ‘Ach. That’ll end in tears. You men are all the same, when it comes down to it. Cheatin’ so-and-sos the lot of ye’. ‘I’m not the same,’ I said, ‘For a start, I fucking love the trams.’
Molotov Coffee Tale
Recently, I’ve worried that my subversive streak has disappeared. There have been times when Nick Robinson appeared on my television and I’ve thrown screenwards nothing weightier than a Malteser. To rectify this, I recently visited a chain cafe and ordered a ‘medium coffee’. Behind the counter, a serving man reeled and stared at me in abject fear. It was as if I were a masked anarchist about to bring down a Molotov Cocktail on his head. When finally he’d translated my request into Starbuckese he asked, ‘Would you like any cakes or muffins with that?’ Pausing, and looking deeply into his eyes, I replied, ‘Have you got any Rich Tea biscuits?’ SMASH THE STATE.
Food Review Extra
We’re all searching for La Dolce Vita (In English, ‘the good life’. In Albanian, ‘jeta e ëmbël’). For some, it resides in the accrual of wealth and possessions. For others, it is represented by a return to simplicity and nature. Believing in the second path, two close friends of mine, Tom and Barbara (wait a minute…Ed), recently tried to find the good life by embracing a ‘grow your own’ culture of fruit, veg and knitted jumpers.
Yet the answer is far simpler. It is, in fact, a good toasted sandwich, as my second chin attests. The basic filling ingredients are always the same: orange cheese and wafer-thin ham. Ideally, the former is purchased from a chain producer you’ve never heard of and will never again see in any retailer (something like ‘Mr Shopper’ or ‘Countrydale Farms’), and the latter should contain random blobs of white and 85 to 92% water. The vice holding the two consists of the kind of cheap pre-sliced white bread that appals the French, its foamy resolution making for a mousetrap embrace.
By foot I journeyed to Leith’s exclusive Junction Street area, a place where, according to a UNESCO survey, one is never more than 14 metres from a greeting card shop and a man shouting ‘Jamesy. JAMESY. Gies a phone later ye radge.’ There, I found La Dolce Vita, a handsome trattoria of some repute.
The good life is also to be found in order and cleanliness, and La Dolce had both. On each table, a full array of condiments and cruets nestled neatly; their structural integrity supporting laminated menus. Messrs Sheen and Muscle are clearly regular visitors: furniture, floors and the open plan kitchen were as clean as a hospital ward after several MRSA scares.
My toastie arrived swiftly, though I was slightly alarmed to see its brown bread sheath. Bourgeois deviations can at times, though, be acceptable: this was one of those occasions. What a toastie. When things come together like the ham, cheese and residual heat of this sandwich, I am lost in the moment. In fact, I am living the good life.
Score: 8/10
Damage: Under £3 with an overly acidic 2011 Lemon Fanta
Illustration: Flamingo68.deviantart.com