in yer ear

Sat down next to gal on bus yesterday discussing her “finance” exam marks on a mobile phone. Pitiful assault on the ears as I am trying to get to grips with Mr Roth’s rumination on his losing his modern library collection and disappointing his mother or plucking the feathers out of a pigeon or peeling grapes or… that’s the point the endless humphing in my left ear about a 71 that should have been an 84 like, (that word is the equiv. of a blink in this dialect, it’s so overused) meant there was no possible way to ascertain anything from the pages of my book.

Conversations about finance marks are useless. I could appreciate you won’t come to my wedding, I have a strange worrying bump on my elbow, I don’t know which way I should vote, I only have three Christmas’s left, type conversations, but this was unfathomable, unnecessary and likely to continue for 25 bus stops.

I moved. Enraged. To the dangerous seats in the centre of the bus, which turn about, and I have been ejected from a couple of times.

On moving I note a woman who I thought might be a woman I recognize from theflower-shop, but because recognizing people aint my strongest skill I cannot be sure. Today I ran into her. Were you on that bus? She confirms she was sat there trying to repeat a Latin word for some obscure muscle or tendon in her head in an effort to drown it out.

Every time I see a mobile phone I think of Harold Pinter and his piece. Neither Literature nor Latin could tumble finance yesterday. I think the only thing for the job is sean-nos singing. One of these days I will pluck up the courage to breathe in and let a desperate ballad of unmitigated ugly wailing out from between my lips about a woman seeking a decent shampoo and set or a large bowl of pea soup. The notes will be long. One word sung in an elongated manner to mimic the husky exhales of a hungry donkey. The song belted out, will travel up that bus and every head shall turn. I will bear the excruciation of it, risk getting myself sectioned for the glory of a hurriedly uttered “yeah gotta go man”.