Tuesday 4 March 2008

Characters on the Tube


The characters on the tube that caught my attention did so, largely because I was sitting opposite them in the train and had nowhere else to fasten my attention except on the explanation of the Piccadilly line in London's underground system. The group I observed were a admixture of a cosmopolitan United Nations!
On the left we have the Iranese (Lebanese?) Mid-eastern mischle bound rough neck with a shaven head and bulging arm muscles, strong hands, large nose and thick lips...but fast asleep and harmless with his head leaning against the glass partition separating the compartment from the sliding doors. On the right hand side (and imagine these two prize fighters in a ring!) we have the well-dressed English businessman, thoroughly modern with suit and white shirt, but tie-less as the Europeans do! He stares straight ahead of him, into nothingness, as if no one else exists.
Next to him is a Turkish girl, poor but hopeful to make it in her new homeland, which is foreign to her. She takes out a little hand mirror and does her eye make-up as if now one is watching and admires herself by turning her head from side to side and pouting her lips.
Adjacent to her is a heavy metal freak with tatoos all over his body, sporting a bandana with black and white skulls. When he stepped into the train he chose to sit on that seat where the Daily Tube Newspaper was lying. Instead of picking it up he sat on it, probably to show his defiance against society as a whole. His face is flaky and his nose red and sore from all the nose rings matching his ear and lip rings. He looks like a display window in a pawn shop with all the rings on his dirty fingers with nails that are equally spoiled and black! His walkman blasts the music into his ears at such ear piercing volume that the rest of us have to endure the overflow of the noise!
Then, quite out of character, he opens his black sling bag (it has to be black!) and takes out...wait for it...a Time Magazine and reads it with great interest!
When he got up the Turkish girl grabbed the crumpled up newspaper, straightened it out and showed off her skill of reading a newly acquired language, but it is obviously not great because she paged quite rapidly through the newspaper.
The businessman next to her strayed and peeped at the headlines for a while, before correcting himself and looking straight ahead again. But it wasn't long until he strayed again and this time kept reading over her shoulder for longer spells, the two of them making a silent duet!
In the middle perched a wannabe model with matching high collared black coat, black slacks and black silk stockings, grandiose make up, matching rings and hair decorations, designer sling bag over the shoulder resting on her lap...but her shoes gave her away...brown hush puppies! This suggested that she had a long way to walk to work - which wasn't doing modelling at all!
Bleak House sat next to her. Well, meaning by that, of course, a dull looking up-town girl with no effort at all to do make-up except an eye-liner. You get the message: make-up takes so long to put on and you only have to take it all off again at night when you get home, so why bother in the first place?
The only other person that could fit on that line of seats was an Easter-European with a slit-eyed expression of a Russian Mafia mobster that never looked at anything or anyone. Perhaps he was on a life-threatening mission?
Then a thought occurred to me: 'And God loves them all!'
Who could love a muscle bound rough neck from the Middle East? God does.
Who could love a boring English gentleman? God does.
Who could love a wannabe model who will never make the grade? God does.
Who would love the working class girl with no make-up? God does.
And who would love a mobster from Eastern Europe? God does.
And the heavy metal freak? God loves him too!
So, if God could love all these characters on the Tube Train in London, he could surely love you and me as well? Just a thought for the day...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lovely if you can laugh and then cry within just a few seconds.
What reality!
Elda