bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

I am not by nature a coarse man; perhaps a little bawdy, usually in need of a bath, a hot meal and an early night, and constantly wearing at least one item of clothing too small or too large for me, certainly, but not actually coarse, or seedy, or lewd.

I was therefore surprised to find myself knocking loudly on the the window of a Greenwich cafe one Saturday morning quite recently in order to alert the assembled breakfasters not only to the existence of my reproductive organs, but also, once the initial interest in my general groinal area had waned, an invitation to further unchaste perusal by pointing out the exact whereabouts of every component part thereof.   Happily, I had my complicated summer trading shorts on, but only because they are too complex to remove.

The reason for this immodest display is mercifully simple.   Keith and Danny have recently taken to having breakfast at this particular cafe, and although I am always invited, I am usually hefting stock around London Bridge station as they are tucking into a Full English and talking about a) the photographic arts and their place in pre-Castro Cuban society (Keith) or b) tits (Danny). I was able to ascertain from the glazed look settling like autumn across the proprietor’s face that Keith had engaged him in a protracted discussion of a).   It was this that prompted me to convey the message that Keith was ‘talking bollocks again’ through the window, via mime.

‘Talking bollocks again’ is not an easy phrase to get across wordlessly.   In retrospect I should just have gone in and said ‘Is he talking bollocks again?  He does this a lot.  He’s being boring to distract you from the fact that he’s also monstrously old and fat’ or something, but by the time I had knocked on the glass I had put myself on the spot somewhat.   Thus committed, my mime involved what appeared to be the opening movements of the Birdie Song dance for ‘talking’, the aforementioned display of gonadalogical location for ‘bollocks’ and a strange hand over hand rolling movement for ‘again’.   I later found out that the proprietor is Portuguese and speaks little English, and I was therefore quite lucky that he just laughed and didn’t, for example, interpret it as a request to physically emasculate me and roll the resultant spare parts down Evelyn Street towards the National Maritime Museum.

Those of you who popped in last week will recall me whining on about Mike, who does bit of printing for us, and his trademark excellent way of providing terrible service.   If Mike worked for Rentokill, he would respond to, say, a minor infestation of woodlice by burning your house down, and then, when you said ‘Yeah, I can see how you’ve cleared the infestation, but on the other hand you’ve burned my house down’ would respond with something like ‘Yes – ensuring they never infest this property again’ and make you feel like you had received exceptional value for money.   Arriving at the market after the miming episode, I asked Mike, with a familiar sense of rising anger and dread, if he had managed to do this weeks’ printing.   Surprisingly, he had.   I took the stock away with the same nervous bonhomie as one who is about to be hypnotised in front of an audience.   Some hours later, I went back to his stall and asked why all the prints felt so scratchy and rough – you could literally strike a match on them.  ‘Oh yeah, that’s the varnish’ he beamed ‘It’ll increase the life of the inks from seventy five years to over two hundred.   I meant to say though, it will make the prints feel like total shit, so don’t let anyone touch them, for fuck’s sake’.   It’s a shame I didn’t foresee myself writing this at the time, as I could have responded with ‘Yes Micheal, I have cut your bollocks off – but don’t be upset, as on the plus side it can only happen once, so it’s good news really’ and tied all the themes together quite neatly.

Twitter. Whatever.

publicgriefjunkie reluctant facebook group. Still at 117 members, although I think Erica TV Paris might not be real.   I hope he is, obviously, as it will spice the place up a bit.    Also, a transvestite would probably take more care keeping their genitals tidily away than I have recently.