Old Git on the Northern Line, Wednesday evening

I’m having a break from fiction writing. Maybe these random thoughts will serve as a substitute until – if  - inspiration should return. Just tell me to stop, if I should ….

There’s a column in the MetroTalk page of the Metro, the free newspaper given away on tubes and trains. It doesn’t have an actual headline, but it could I suppose be called ‘Brief Encounter’ or, more prosaically, the Letch Corner.

Here are some typical entries from a few months back:

To the stunning raven in the pencil skirt (got) on at Oxford Circus…We smiled at each other while I was teaching my clumsy dog to use the escalator…

Tall Guy in Boots With His Dog

Or:

The Northern Line to High Barnet…You had a bird tattoo on your neck and were wearing a great outfit. ... There was some eye contact before I got off at Archway…

Short-haired Brunette With Cat Eye Glasses

You get the drift. There’s lots of getting off in this column but, as we’re British, no one actually Gets Off.

Sometimes you do wonder how we ever manage to reproduce ourselves in this country. Phoebe, in a Bloomsbury caff, gets someone to watch her food, he complements her on her nails, offers her a cookie…

Then: If (you’re) somehow reading this, get in touch….

For God’s sake, Phoebe, you had him cornered in the coffee shop! Why didn't you ask hime then? Could have saved a whole lot of trouble, or at least an email to the Metro.

Here’s my tale of unrequited letch-… I mean, love. It’s not going to be in the Metro’s column, so I can go on a bit.

Old Git on the Northern Line (with nothing better to do on a Wednesday evening)

Pretty young woman in a long grey overcoat sitting diagonally opposite, I think you got on at King’s Cross, or maybe Bank. Reading a book; everyone else was fiddling about with their mobiles, apart from me. I people-watched; well, I watched the pretty, literate young woman diagonally opposite. You seemed to be smiling at what you were reading. You had one of those wide mouths. Turned-down lips; strangely, it makes you look as if you’re smiling, even if you’re not.

That doesn't sound very complementary, I know. But you were nice.

I was the old git in a mustard-yellow jacket, the one who was pretending not to stare, only of course you did notice. I was on my way to a pub, one I’d found on the internet, Ye Olde Mitre on Barnet High Street, but you don’t have to know that. Let’s say I was on my way to a book signing in High Barnet Waterstone’s. (Do they even have a Waterstone’s in High Barnet? I’ll Google it when I get home.) You don’t need to know that I’m happily married, either.

Your book, a thickish paperback, was The Teacher by a Frank Mc, Mc-something. Something else to Google.

Books, I’ve noticed, usually have titles like that. ‘Teacher’ – it’s resonant. Teachers are a force for good…but they can also be sinister, you know, they can teach bad stuff, too …

You wouldn’t call your novel The Plumber, would you? Not unless you were being ironic. Or writing something profound, about plumbing.

Nor, for that matter, would you call your story: Old Git with an Oystercard (and nothing better to do on a Wednesday evening).

I’d noticed that you were within a few pages of the end of The Teacher. You finished it a minute or so before Finchley Central. I thought, maybe, you’d get to the end, sigh, and go into a dreamy reverie about whatever Frank McWotsit had imparted in 400-plus pages.

Actually, you took your phone out and started fiddling with it.

You should have dropped your book, then I could have picked it up for you, we’d have got into conversation about Frank McThingey, I’d have told you all about my burgeoning career as a writer’on ABCtales ... you’d have invited me to her one-bed flat just off New Barnet High Street. Come the end of the week, you’d be inviting me to meet your Mother.

Mother would be absolutely horrified. Probably book you in for a few sessions with the psychiatrist.

You got off at Totteridge & Whetstone. Well, at least it wasn’t Finchley Central. That would have made you a Thatcherite in my book, if you’ll pardon the pun…