Category: People Studies

The Jesus Bus

It was a quiet Thursday afternoon.  I was minding my own business when the bus stopped and a vision so horrifying I almost cried aloud clambered up the steps.  Mormons.

These terrifying apparitions almost always hunt in pairs.  They dress in a business like way to avoid people recognising them at first glance.  Only a small lapel badge gives you any warning at all.  They are undoubtedly pure evil.

These creatures are not selective with their targets, instead they opt for quantity rather than quality.  They will approach you with questions about God.  If you do anything other than run away screaming they will hang onto you like a horny rottweiler hangs onto a postman’s leg.  Their mission on earth is two-fold.  The first is to create a universe where everybody looks the same.  The second is to eradicate any semblance of personality they encounter.  Then and only then will Mormons actually have a chance of getting laid.

I felt them train their sights on me.  I have witnessed it countless times.  They always target the people who are alone.  I turned my back to them and pretended to study the nearest window.  I heard footsteps getting closer and closer.  A tap on my shoulder.  It took every ounce of willpower not to scream in terror.  And then the question.

‘could you spare a few moments to talk about our lord?’

Our lord I thought.  I didn’t know I had a lord, I was certain this was some kind of Jedi-Mormon mind trick.  I tried to string together a sentence.  It was no good.  My lips were dry.  No sound came out.  Then I realised they were talking to me.  There were words like Jesus, God and sin.  I knew if I started to listen I would get off the bus with a white shirt, a tie and a side parting.  In my head I tried to hum a tune to block out the noise and save the surviving molecules of personality which I had managed to retain in 30 years of my existence but the only song I could think of was Umbongo Umbongo they drink it in the jungle.  The problem was that was the only line I knew.  I could feel my blood pressure rising.  If I didn’t act soon I was sure that all the spirituality and righteousness on the bus would almost certainly make my head explode.  I took a deep breath, and caught the end of a sentence about someone dying to save us.  I cleared my throat and asked loud enough for the entire bus to hear.

‘Sorry.  Did you just fart?’

It was then I discovered that Mormons don’t believe in loving thy neighbour.  They both scowled at me as if I was something they had trod in, one of them told me that I was crazy and then they both walked away.  After giving it some thought I realised that they had a point, that I must in fact be crazy.  After all I was the one who approached a complete stranger on the bus and tried to convince him of the existence of a mythical creature which lives in the clouds and made absolutely everything in the universe.  I must remember to book me an appointment with a psychiatrist tomorrow.

Political Incorrectness

The world has changed immeasurably in the last 100 years.  The most notable being the way in which we communicate with each other.  Gone are the days when human beings actually spoke to one another.  Instead we text, email, tweet, like, poke, +1 and comment.  It’s hard for me to believe that there was no internet or mobile phones when I was born.

The downside of the growth of communicative means is that we have created a number of platforms for people to use without relevant instruction.  Many people choose to use these arenas to voice their views on all manner of topics, this way they can feel like they have done their bit.

30 years ago the disenfranchised youth would have meetings and organise protests or demonstrations.  Nowadays they post links to articles on the Guardian and then sit back sipping their moccacino latte’s feeling as if they have contributed to the cause even though they are not sure what exactly the cause entails.

The Politinetico’s are a shining beacon of exactly what is wrong with our generation.  These are the very same creatures who spend a great deal of time moderating their friends  comments to ensure their digital souls are sanitised all the while not actually being capable of explaining why their point is correct instead only vocalising their shock and horror at the fact that someone else can hold an opinion which is contrary to their own.

A great example of  the nauseous stupidity which the internet frequently unleashes is the Ricky Gervais mong gate scandal.  Recently he posted a picture of Karl Pilkington on Twitter and described him as a mong.  Politinetico’s quickly berated him for using an offensive word claiming that he was mocking Downes syndromes and later for reposting a picture of him making a ‘mong’ face.  I honestly wonder what these people did at primary school.  Whilst the rest of us were out in the playgrounds enjoying life, they clearly locked themselves in the library with their frappes and debated the futility of existence.  When I was kid we would use ‘mong’ as a substitute for idiot, never for an attempted medical diagnosis.  Since the advent of the digital camera people all over the world have been taking stupid pictures of themselves for fun.  Fun is the operative word here as it appears that Politinetico’s have got forgotten exactly what that means.

In the early days of the internet people would sign up to forums in order to engage like-minded people in lively debates about subjects which they are passionate about.  The invention of social media means that people no longer need forums.  They can attack anyone from their righteous pedestal without the concern that their victim may be banal enough to engage them in debate.  Nor do they want a debate as in the vast majority of cases they are unable to clearly explain their reasoning.  What they do want is to draw attention to themselves as moral crusaders, as any failure to take the high ground deflates their ego’s to such an extent that their reflections disappear and their arse cracks heal up.  Mongs.

7 Years On

Today is my 7th anniversary in Poland.  I thought I would try to note down some observations on the changes I have witnessed here.  However that is proving to be much more difficult than expected as I haven’t actually seen that many.  What I have experienced are lessons.

The first lesson I learnt here was that despite the fact that Poland looks much the same as any other country, albeit with a higher proportion of tower blocks, cars which drive on the wrong side(which now peculiarly feels like the right side) of the road and signs in a funny language it isn’t.  It is impossible to say that Poland is diverse in its culture and its beliefs because it isn’t.  If anything it is a country still in the process of finding itself and figuring out its place in the 21st century.

The second lesson I learnt was that a grieving Pole is an unpredictable Pole.  It is somewhat typical here to lament your lot in life and look to assign blame.  Rarely do people just move on.  Sadness here can quickly turn to anger.  In the 7 years gone I have witnessed Poland grieve a Pope and a President(with many other poor souls).  Sadness here is a bitter pill.  I have seen miners riot, football hooligans riot and most surprising of all, Old people fight with the police.

The third and final lesson I wish to mention is that bureaucracy is a cancer with always remains.  The remnants of history here are hidden in plain view to anyone who has to visit a tax office, a doctor or apply for anything at all.  The average Polish government office has to cut down the equivalent of 62.7 percent of the amazon rainforest every year in order to have enough paper to ensure that every form is signed and dated in quad-duplicate.  It is as if the advent of computers is kept in the same part of the Polish psyche as the enlightenment.

These are just a few observations in my time here.  Poland is my adopted homeland and in truth trying to love her is like loving your least favourite cousin.  You have to see beyond her rough edges to get to the good stuff.  Now it is my home.  And like any home it needs a few repairs.

I-Tramp

One evening last week I passed through the city centre in Warsaw and experienced one of those incredibly surreal feelings.  I felt like I was surrounded by glass.  Almost like the people I was watching were in fish tanks.  I was desperately looking for evidence that the outside world is changing, that it’s evolving and I was sadly disappointed.  Instead I was confronted by the fact that very little had  changed.

In any centre city anywhere in the world at anytime of day you can find an eclectic mix of the wise, the wonderful and the weird.  I personally believe that you can measure a city’s greatness by the number of schizophrenic’s per square kilometre.  One thing which is certainly more pronounced in Poland is the fact that you can often see the well off  and the poor in plain sight.  Another quirk of fate is that here you see people(sometimes quite well dressed) trawling through the bins whilst women in their ray bans and men on their mobiles pass by.

In Warsaw we have a number of eccentric folk who can be found in the same place doing the same thing on the same day every week.  My personal favourite is chair man.  He is a busker of sorts who is either barking mad or out of his face on amphetamines who stands outside the main metro station drumming on a chair.  He has the rhythm of a woodpecker with ADHD.  Yet his presence is a reassurance, that some things stay the same.  The other night it was the Fat Lady with the labrador.  Every Thursday night they sit by the underpass entrance begging.  Both the lady and her dog are rather plump, they certainly don’t look hungry, and she is always relatively well dressed.  I have no idea what she does the rest of the week but for 7 years(possibly more) she has begged in the same place come ran or shine.  Part of me wonders whether she has always been there.

One thing which has changed is the street entertainment.  In years gone by their was a group of peruvian indians who would dress up and busk.  I have no idea what became of them as I haven’t seen them for an awfully long time.  Nowadays it seems their pitch has been taken by an evangelical street church.  I like to stop for a few minutes every time they are there as they appear to be barking mad.  It seems that their tactic is to pay tramps to give thrilling speeches along the lines of  I used to drink everyday.  I was an alcoholic.  Until Jesus saved me.’  Just once I hope to hear someone shout out a correction ‘No.  You used to be an alcoholic, until you stopped drinking.’  I have probably spent 10-15 minutes of my life listening to the street church and I have only ever heard ex-alcoholics speaking.  Admittedly Poland does have a major alcohol problem, yet still I am surprised that God apparently spends so much of his time  saving alcoholics rather than the millions of starving children in the world.

It delights me that in Warsaw you can find a wide variety of buskers.  They vary by age, instrument and talent.  They create a wonderful ambience which in moments of introspection allow you to convince yourself that world isn’t such a shitty place.  I have seen men in their 70’s performing a number of gypsy love songs in Spanish, I have seen Romanians playing dirges on their accordions,  young people playing a diverse range of songs we an acoustic guitar and a cup of spare change.  However none of these beat my favourite.  There is an old man who first appeared around a year and a half ago.  He sits in one underpass and plays a harmonica.  A year and a half ago he was awful, and now he is marginally better.  The great thing has been actually being able to notice his improvement.  He is so much a fixture of my life that I feel like I should name him.

One thing which hasn’t changed in 7 years is the number of people who harass you for spare change or cigarettes.  When I smoked I used to consider it a city centre tax levy.  Now I don’t I generally get irritable remarks and dirty looks.  Last week I was walking from the underground station to the bus station when a man approached me and asked me for a cigarette.  Habitually I like to study these people and see if I get any feeling about how genuine these people are.  This man had a smartish green jacket, his jeans were in good condition and his trainers were a dirty white.  In other words he looked relatively normal.  When I told him I don’t smoke, he asked me if I had any spare change without offering any reason why.  Just as I reached into my pocket a telephone rang.  The man reached into his pocket and I shit you not, pulled out an I-phone.  As he answered I walked away, and I didn’t look back.

Beauty On The Subway

Whilst commuting to a meeting today a memory was jogged from deep inside me.  Sometime in the spring I was travelling on the underground when a number of kids, surely no more than 7 or 8 years old got on the train.  It was clear that it was a school trip from out of town as even their chaperones were showing some signs of fear and discomfort.  One of the boys was overcome with excitement from being on an underground train for the first time in his life.  It was a picture of sheer beauty as they kid stood in the middle of the train, ignoring the adults urgings to hold onto something, saying things like wow, cool and brilliant.  The fact that this everyday thing proved to be so exhilarating for this lad was absolutely inspiring.  I was overcome with the urge to let go of the pole and air surf along side him.  Shamefully for me I didn’t.  Instead I watched on with jealousy as the realisation that my zest for life was clearly smaller than his sunk deep into my psyche.

Today like most days, is rather normal.  No one is displaying any signs of having fun, at least outwardly anyway.  Instead people are busying themselves with averting their eyes from the glances of others and concentrating on not showing any recognition of the fact that this speeding death tube stinks to high hell of human sweat and toxic farts.  I wonder what would happen if I air surf in the middle of the train and say cool out loud a few times?  Will anyone make eye contact with me?  Will they all think I am mad?  Or will there be at least one person with a child inside who will want to join in?