bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel,

Yeah I can’t see the point of having asthma, but I occasionally get a version of it when sprinting for overland trains at Greenwich station after trading. I refer to it as Constant Asthma, and you get it by charging for a train and launching yourself onto the carriage with seconds to spare before the half hour wait for it to actually leave starts. Trying to maintain an air of quiet dignity under these circumstances is quite a trick, and I instead favour slumping red faced against the window, trying not to vomit, and gasping like a sex pest. People will look at you in a slightly curious manner as you recover, which is when you’d like to explain that actually you breathe like this all the time, no matter what you are doing – washing your hair, playing chess, anything – because you suffer from Constant Asthma, hence the phrase. An attack of Constant Asthma can usually be avoided by getting on the Docklands Light Railway, which leaves every eight minutes, and I think I shall do this in future.

[Hitting Read More now will - somewhat remarkably - sort out the identity of Jack the Ripper]

At the other end of the DLR is Bank station, and from there it’s a quick scuttle up the Northern Line to Moorgate. From Moorgate, you have to get to the Duke of Wellington as quickly as possible, so you only have to get Gary a Stella. If you dawdle at this point, the Spitalfields and Brick Lane contingent will beat you there and you’ll get stung for a full round. This can be a horrifying fiscal experience, especially in a recession.

Anyway. As you turn off Bishopsgate, you walk along a dismal stretch of Victorian cobblestones on what, one hundred and twenty years ago, must have been a very bleak and unloved thoroughfare indeed. It’s not exactly a little piece of Mardi Gras now, to be honest, even though these days it borders a hairdressing salon and a wedding cake shop, and is therefore quite possibly gay. It certainly isn’t the sort of place you would wish to conclude an evening – most of us would rather be tucked up in bed with a good book and a kebab, I’m sure – especially if, like Mary Jane Kelly, you had Jack the Ripper hacking your uterus out and carving your face off while you were doing so. Having the most prostitutey name ever and then walking through one of the most murdery looking bits of London is kind of asking for it, but you’d still feel a bit shortchanged. Going to the Duke means that you walk right on the very spot that this happened, and it’s pretty eerie I can tell you.

We were chatting about the leading suspects in the Ripper case once as we wandered back from the Duke. Chris – who is right to be concerned, being that he wouldn’t last five minutes near a sex case what with his lovely soft face like a baby deer and hair like a lady – thinks that the Ripper was Queen Victoria’s son, Albert Victor. I think Albert was supposed to have been fond of a go on grotesque gin sodden endlessly cackling shawl and bonnet wearing derelicts now and again, and those of them that knew this needed to be kept quiet via slaughter. Myself, I reckon it was the Polish bloke. If Jack the Ripper had been English, he’d have turned up late, or without his knives, or got stuck on the tube at Bethnal Green. The Poles always do a good job, they do it on time, and they want the work. Open and shut case innit.

Bored office worker?: publicgriefjunkie reluctant facebook group.

Trainee stalker?: twitter.