Sunday of my Life

I quite realise that recycling things by giving them to someone else to use again has its place, and its time. I just wish so much of that time and place was not in my time or at my place. Things are forever ending up with me that are hand-me-downs. Through out my life many pairs of shoes were ones that others had outgrown, clothes from my Aunts that their children had outgrown. My bed was a hand-me-down, as was my chest-of-drawers. Our lounge-suite, the old, crappy, cracked green vinyl one that was skin-glue on a hot summer’s day was a hand-me-down from my Aunt Susan. So the latest in the string of hand-me-downs that characterise my life: the chair I shall henceforth be using at my computer.

My previous chair was old. Very old. It was sweat-stained and it smelled terrible. We did our best over the years to clean it, but it just did not want to be cleaned. So we got a new one. I just got finished assembling it when I am informed that this, in fact, is going to be my father’s new chair, and I’ll have his old one. Oh joy, thought I, another blood hand-me-down. What do I look like? A good repository for everyone’s no-longer-wanted junk? I don’t ask for any of this stuff; it’s simply given to me, and I should be grateful for it. Should I? I suppose with some things, things I need, yes, I should be. But not this time. No way in hell, this time. Why should I be gateful that the chair I a) picked; b) partially paid for (admittedly not much, but some, enough to give me a say, at least); and c) assembled, will now be given to someone else, and I’ll end up with their rubbish. Again.

**Lé sigh**

No point in arguing it, becuase I won’t win. I never do. So I will simply silently rebel and shift the chairs around at every opportunity.

As stated by a hairy Scottish comedian (no, not Billy Connolly) at a previous Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala
‘So I was on the train the other day, and I remember looking around and thinking “Where’s the looney? There’s always one big hairy looney on public transport that no one wants to sit near,” and with that I looked down at myself and thought, “Oh shit! It’s me!” I felt like turning to the person next to me and “Hello! Do you like pillows? I do! I’m not allowed anything hard!”‘

Well today, I was on the train with the looney. Poor guy had turrets syndrome or something. Funny thing though was… well, a few different things actually. He was sitting there wearing this huge old greatcoat with the collar pulled up and this board-brimmed old felt hat that seen so much wear that it was now, basically, a felt cone on his head. And he had a Smell. It fully justified the capital S, for it was entity all to itself. Basically, I got onto the train and ran into Foul Ol’ Ron*. I’d wear, in amongst his other incoherent mutterings I was fully expecting to hear the dulcet tones of “I told ‘em, I told ‘em. Millenium hand and shrimp. Buggrit.”

* Find him way, way down that page, under ‘Beggers’

I’d just like to say, in this very short and sweet post, that privacy is a wonderful thing. I wish I had some left. That would be nice

Thankyou