Rail trip to Bristol, part two

As I write this, I can hear a bustling jumble of sounds. Most immediately, I can hear Juana Molina whispering into my ears, accompanied by warm travelling pulses and restless bell sounds.

Opposite me is a plain-looking girl talking very loudly on a mobile phone about a disappointing ball that she attended last night. More irritating, though, is the sound of a mobile phone’s speakers strangling some live recording of a song. Two long haired guys are grinning at each other while the frankly horrible sound is being repeated on their phone.

I catch the eye of the girl sat adjacent to me. She makes a weird collection of changing faces at me, indicating her feelings towards these mobile phone hippy geeks. Her faces conveys a variety of emotions. Firstly, a desperate raise of the eyebrows signifying mostly that yes, she has also heard this terrible sound and gosh how ghastly!

Next, she makes a nodding motion towards the mobile phone that she is holding to indicate that no, it isn’t her phone making this bizarre crackle – her phone doesn’t even have the capability to play crap quality sound recordings!

Then she mouths a couple of words and tilts her head back to point out the true villains of this exchange – the scruffy students in the seats behind, probably high on dope puff.

What she does now is smile and look over to the A4 notepad I’m idly scribbling into.

This all happened within just a few brief moments. I should also mention that during the whole delicate interaction, I provided just enough physical gestures to render myself polite and even friendly. I leaned when leaning was appropriate, I smiled when smiled at; I shrugged and held up my pen when she looked at my notepad; and most of all I refrained from lifting my t-shirt and rubbing my flabby belly in front of her.

The reason I sit on this long journey is because I am heading to Bristol to do some training for another new job. This time I’ve contractually agreed to spend my days travelling around the North East, subjecting the general public to my back-of-spoon wit and lion’s mane, whilst bullying them into handing over their bank details to siphon monthly dollars from their account in the name of charity.

I’m using the plight of big-bellied African children to pay for hair wax and flavoured condoms. “Look at this picture. He’s not fat because he’s greedy (me), he’s fat because he’s starving. Now, what’s your sortcode?”

If you were a brown child living in the UK, who just happened to have a freakishly potted belly, you would inevitably find yourself falling into a career of well-paid modelling jobs for numerous charitable promotional leaflets. I guess the work would dry up once you hit a certain age, say twelve. No one’s gonna be motivated to tears and charitable actions by the sight of a spotty adolescent with coiffed hair and bling. And once the work had dried up, can this cynical, spoiled brat who has spent his short life earning a living exploiting the platonic concept of 'Charity', ever expect to make it in the real world? Fashion isn’t exactly ready for fatties, however hard Evans tries.

No, this tainted individual will have to take to the streets, like I, promoting his own cause for once.
Weirdly, most of the people I have spoken to about this job are less concerned about the moral implications and more bothered by the fact that I’ll be one of those annoying fuckers that you put on your headphones for.