Pining

One of the less savoury aspects of my daily commute to work has been the introduction of a short subway journey into town. Normally I walk to work and this suits me fine, it gives me a chance to clear my head, get some fresh(ish) air and enter work in a decent frame of mind. The same cannot be said of cramming onto a packed tube train full of ill mannered mouthbreathers and people who SHOUT FOR A LIVING!!! There are times when I wish some bastard would climb aboard with a semtex rucksack and just end it all............Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I'm now working in the city centre at a different office. It's hideous. The work makes no sense, things are only half explained to me and when I ask for help I come back only marginally wiser than I was before. I end up just scanning stuff and hope that nobody notices that's all i'm doing. It's also one of those places where people shout down phones. One woman in particular is most distracting. I'm sure she's a lovely person, it's just that she sounds like she's having a barney with whomever it is on the other end. She isn't but she feels she needs to raise her voice and keep it raised. On my last day, i'm half tempted to leave a post-it on her desk with 'Soto Voce' written on it. One of the better things about taking public transport to work is that I get a copy of the metro to myself. I like the metro. It's daft and not terribly informative but it has a fine features section and an insane letters page. It was one of these 'frivolous' stories that stopped me in my tracks today. It concerned a rare black swan on a lake in Germany. It seems to have fallen in love with a swan shaped paddle boat. It circles the craft, gazes at it endlessly and honks away mournfully in hope of reciprocation. A bit like me trying to pull. But with less honking. Anyway, the story (for all it's brevity) stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder at the unintentionally cruel nature of this incident. This poor animal stumbles upon what it thinks is the object of it's desire but has no way of realising, beyond bitter experience that it is in fact an inanimate object incapable of responding to it's forlorn mating calls. Apparently biologists hope that the swan will have overcome it's crush by the time winter arrives, principally because that's when the boat gets locked away. Not a chance, far too soon. Everyone knows crushes take at least a year to subside. Swans seem like quite intense animals, so i'd say all parties are in for a hard time. I'm sure theres a concept album in this for someone. 'The Swan & The Pedallo' Any Takers?