"Toilet's for customers only"
Boorishly terse or just ungrammatical? You decide.
Apologies for the absence of visual aids to the foregoing conundrum, but my cherished Motorola phone burbled its last, face down in a cup of tea recently. One could debate endlessly the minutiae of how and why and what kind of idiot leaves his phone within comfortable dunking distance of an unattended beverage while it's being used as an alarm clock, but I prefer to deal with issues rather than personalities.
I watched Network again tonight for the first time in years. Brilliant film. In the pantheon of cinematic one-liners "I'm sorry I impugned your cockmanship" yields only to "It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the HOPE..." from the otherwise farcically formulaic and formulaically farcical eighties comedy Clockwise.
You know that acute sense of disorientation invoked by the reappearance of a familiar face long since consigned to memory? It was visited upon me recently in the person of Gerry. Gerry was a swarthy, unkempt fixture of my teenage surroundings, whose presence would invariably be announced (and existence affirmed) by a plaintive, six-note whistled phrase of indeterminate provenance (if, indeed, it derived from any existing musical work at all.) A nocturnal beast, Gerry's signature tune would pierce the still air on solitary summer nights when it often provided my only tangible reminder of civilisation.
He also possessed an irascible Jack Russell named Rat, and an incongruously formidable physique honed in the Atlas gym. And, needless to say, he was mad as a kettle. He once earned me a severe parental reprimand by accusing me of striking him on the head with a missile (to whit, one air-to-surface potato.) This was particularly infuriating by virtue of the uncontested fact that I HAD inflicted a barrage of potatoes and assorted vegetables upon unwitting pedestrians during a brief interlude of juvenile delinquency, but as (if) God is my witness I never struck anyone, least of all Gerry. I was thus imbued with the singular indignation of a guilty man hanged for the wrong crime.
Anyway, I encountered Gerry whilst loitering at the bus stop on Westmoreland Street early one Monday morning, and briefly entertained the notion of whistling those six wistful notes in hope of recognition. Instead, I contented myself with a cheery "Alright, Gerry" upon boarding our mutual 13A. It was at this point that my smug presumptive thesis was disproved. You see, I had banked upon the notion that Gerry, in his capacity as a local eccentric, would long since have attained the realm of self-caricature, becoming a "character" and ceding ownership of his own identity in the process. He would therefore be entirely accustomed, I assumed, to strangers greeting him by name.
In fact, rather than the expected grunt of acknowledgement, Gerry beckoned me with a (disturbingly coquettish) crook of the finger as I prepared to ascend the staircase. "How do you know me? he enquired, inquisitively but not belligerently. I explained that I grew up a few doors down in number 62, and he recalled my family instantly. He was aware of my mother's death and proffered a solemn hand in condolence. All in all, it was both a humbling and heartening experience. Good on you Gerry, you mad old fucker.
Mention of Gerry reminds me of another childhood acquaintance, Michael Mann. Michael and I were born in adjacent beds and by a curious quirk of circumstance grew up in adjacent apartments. We weren't particularly close, but I always felt a very palpable bond with him - to my literal-minded psyche, the circumstances of our birth forged between us a stronger kinship than I felt with my siblings. Unfortunately Michael was a bit thick. I wonder what he's doing now? Probably being thick in a slightly larger body. (After all, the child is the father of the Mann.)
Apologies for the absence of visual aids to the foregoing conundrum, but my cherished Motorola phone burbled its last, face down in a cup of tea recently. One could debate endlessly the minutiae of how and why and what kind of idiot leaves his phone within comfortable dunking distance of an unattended beverage while it's being used as an alarm clock, but I prefer to deal with issues rather than personalities.
I watched Network again tonight for the first time in years. Brilliant film. In the pantheon of cinematic one-liners "I'm sorry I impugned your cockmanship" yields only to "It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the HOPE..." from the otherwise farcically formulaic and formulaically farcical eighties comedy Clockwise.
You know that acute sense of disorientation invoked by the reappearance of a familiar face long since consigned to memory? It was visited upon me recently in the person of Gerry. Gerry was a swarthy, unkempt fixture of my teenage surroundings, whose presence would invariably be announced (and existence affirmed) by a plaintive, six-note whistled phrase of indeterminate provenance (if, indeed, it derived from any existing musical work at all.) A nocturnal beast, Gerry's signature tune would pierce the still air on solitary summer nights when it often provided my only tangible reminder of civilisation.
He also possessed an irascible Jack Russell named Rat, and an incongruously formidable physique honed in the Atlas gym. And, needless to say, he was mad as a kettle. He once earned me a severe parental reprimand by accusing me of striking him on the head with a missile (to whit, one air-to-surface potato.) This was particularly infuriating by virtue of the uncontested fact that I HAD inflicted a barrage of potatoes and assorted vegetables upon unwitting pedestrians during a brief interlude of juvenile delinquency, but as (if) God is my witness I never struck anyone, least of all Gerry. I was thus imbued with the singular indignation of a guilty man hanged for the wrong crime.
Anyway, I encountered Gerry whilst loitering at the bus stop on Westmoreland Street early one Monday morning, and briefly entertained the notion of whistling those six wistful notes in hope of recognition. Instead, I contented myself with a cheery "Alright, Gerry" upon boarding our mutual 13A. It was at this point that my smug presumptive thesis was disproved. You see, I had banked upon the notion that Gerry, in his capacity as a local eccentric, would long since have attained the realm of self-caricature, becoming a "character" and ceding ownership of his own identity in the process. He would therefore be entirely accustomed, I assumed, to strangers greeting him by name.
In fact, rather than the expected grunt of acknowledgement, Gerry beckoned me with a (disturbingly coquettish) crook of the finger as I prepared to ascend the staircase. "How do you know me? he enquired, inquisitively but not belligerently. I explained that I grew up a few doors down in number 62, and he recalled my family instantly. He was aware of my mother's death and proffered a solemn hand in condolence. All in all, it was both a humbling and heartening experience. Good on you Gerry, you mad old fucker.
Mention of Gerry reminds me of another childhood acquaintance, Michael Mann. Michael and I were born in adjacent beds and by a curious quirk of circumstance grew up in adjacent apartments. We weren't particularly close, but I always felt a very palpable bond with him - to my literal-minded psyche, the circumstances of our birth forged between us a stronger kinship than I felt with my siblings. Unfortunately Michael was a bit thick. I wonder what he's doing now? Probably being thick in a slightly larger body. (After all, the child is the father of the Mann.)