Being Defined by your Bus Route

“Excuse me, could you turn your music down”? 

“Er…no, no I couldn’t”, came the Lollster’s reply.

Are you effing kidding me?  It was all I could do not to Glasgow Kiss this mofo into the dark of the Regent’s Canal.  A coroner’s verdict; death by smug entitlement. 

This was 8 in the AM.  I was yet to have my Shreddies.  This ‘suit’ was pushing my buttons.  It’s the assumption, the ASSUMPTION, that my sodden Converse and knackered Nano suggest that I’m a reprobate.  Just because my hair is uncombed and my socks mismatched, does not mean that I’m a *scuzzbucket. 

*As it goes, I am a scuzz bucket.  But don’t just ASSUME.

We are all a mix of things.  Can we not play Mumm-ra above Government-recommended-decibels, whilst also having a thoughtful and decadent Moonpig card on order for Mother’s Day?  (Or as I like to call it; Babs’ Day).  Just how do we show our softer sides at the arse end of a bendy bus? 

I have this trouble with men too: blind them with skank so they have to dig for the good shit.  The dinosaur bones of warmth and loveliness below the layers of potty mouthed chic.   It’s hard to show your fair maiden-ness when upstaged by your own spade hands knocking back shots.  It doesn’t matter how mean you make your mousakka or how soft your lower arms are, if you have a ‘mouth’, that’s all the brethren may see.

There’s this guy at work…he has a beard, (quel surprise) and a chip on his shoulder; lovely.  We were flirting, we were flirting good, for a long while.  But the eye contact dropped, the emails stopped and I was left out in the cold; an icicle for a heart and a carrot for a nose. 

My mates think it’s the brashness.  The intimidating stench of sordid stories.  That I come across, for want of a better word, as…slaggy.  (Regular readers will know the ridiculousness of this idea, being that I see less action than Bruce Willis in **Die Hard 5). 

**I haven’t seen Die Hard 5 but I imagine it’s shitty with a lack of vigour, hair and thought provoking car chases.  

Maybe we all become parodies in the end.  I was North London once, with morals and unchipped nails.  I thanked the bus driver with the rest of them and moved aside for pushchairs.  But back then I was both young and stupid.  This was long before ***E8 penetrated my blood like glorious, saccharine Smack. 

***As everyone knows, you’re not true Hackney unless your pizza boy is too scared to deliver to your door.  Call me old fashioned but I don’t want to take out my rubbish unless a pit bull tears me a new asshole. 

Poster children for the Hackney massive.  Someone get these slags a Synth.

Now, I ride the 55 where there ain’t never a seat and hair gel smudges the windows like standard-issue pedo lenses.  Your music could never be too loud in this passive aggressive wonderverse.  It’s goddamn beautiful.

I can't change.  As the great Ghandi once said, "once a skag, always a skag".  No more riding the 341, mid morning through Farringdon.  I will stay within the Hackney fort walls at all times.  A member of an indigenous tribe, safe inside a tracing of a Bloc Party in-sleeve.  Resolute-like London, sturdy-like a Boris bike.  Starting the revolution with pewter Rimmel lipstick and scores of Oolong tea.  Putting off men with tea-bagging stories, enunciated swear words and made to order graphic mimes. 

Who knows? Maybe a beard will never unearth my dinosaur bones but at least the beats of a mediocre pop band will permeate, defiantly, through tiny specs of sand and stolid desert winds…

Or maybe I’ll just tweet Bruce Willis and together we will take some fuckers down. 

Ippy ki yay mother funkers, ippy ki yay.