Tube Lies

I was sitting on the Northern Line this afternoon when a young bloke and his girlfriend got on at Old St, it was medium busy. They moved to two empty seats and just as they flopped down a pretty girl, sitting nearly opposite, who'd watched them closely since they got on sort of half screamed, half belched "Stephen!!". (I'm going to refer to the young bloke as Stephen from now on, I never found out what his girlfriends name was)

Stephen understandably looked a bit bewildered initially, as you do when confronted with a tube nutter, but then, with an expression that was a mix of comprehension and terror, he plonked himself down on the seat in the frank realization that he was sitting down, stuck on the tube, with his new girlfriend, looking at his old girlfriend, and that there was absolutely nowhere to go. (I know she was his old girlfriend from the conversation that folllowed).

So the old girlfriend and the current/ex boyfriend exchanged pleasantries, in that typically British way that says nothing outwardly and everything inwardly until she got off at Camden. To be fair she looked very Camden, sort of mix between douche and hipster, pretty sure that the Ray Bans she had on were clear rather than lensed. Anyway she's not important, I have a Camden pleb rant planned for the future. The current/ex boyfriend and the definitely current girlfriend sat in silence before the definitely current girlfriend asked her chap, loudly, as if to avoid any chance of him fudging an answer in front of so many captive witnesses (or to her mind possibly jurors), "SO that was Charlotte, she's slim? I suppose you think she's prettier than me?". WHY DO YOU GIRLS DO THIS?

This is the moment dreaded by all men, you are put on the spot, in public and asked to declare your love, or at least allegiance, to your other half, in public. Again this happened in public, in front of other people, and strangers no less.

Every single man in earshot stayed silent, but throughout the sub-ether gentlemans communication network there was an audible "oompff", as if we shared a collective kick to the guts and then a slight release of the pressure as individually each bloke realized it was them in the hot spot and settled in for the show.

There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch on, and on, and on a bit more. The collected men, now avidly watching the drama unfold from the protective cocoon of the early edition Evening Standard (smashing feature on property prices in Palmers Green incidentally) were urging Stephen to say something, praying he'd do something soon, before the awkwardness surrounding the couple enveloped the rest of us and meant we'd have to start talking to our respective partners.

Then Stephen started to move his lips, and like watching a child take it's first steps, we could see the inspiration hit, illuminated Stephen knocked the awful question out of the park, "Not really, she's agorophobic"..the girl looks confused, "yeah" says Stephen "Absolute fucking nightmare anywhere but the tube".

The blokes in the carriage communicated silently through the ether again, "well played sir, well played".

Did you fuck it up?

Surprising how accurately this joke chart maps real life behaviour!

Why is it so

That when you look up into the sky in daylight you can see no further than the atmosphere? I know the sky is blue because of the scattering effect of the atmosphere on photons of light from the sun. However, when you see a still photo taken from above the Earth, on the moon for example or taken from an orbiting satellite there's a clear view of the planets surface? I guess a more structured question is why is there not scattering effect on the photons being bounced back into space from the Earth as they pass through the atmosphere a second time??

Unless maybe all of the photons in the blue wavelength are dispersed on their first trip and there's none left for the return journey?

Am I being really dim?

Wheel of Time or Malazan Empire?

I like reading epic Sci-fi and fantasy series es es 's' but I'm in a quandry at the moment. I've invested close to 8 years (on and off, not concurrently)reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. These books and I have had a volatile relationship over the years, like many relationships in fairness, but now there's someone new on the scene and I'm torn.

I picked up Steven Eriksons' "Garden of the Moon" a few days ago and I'm smitten.. Gone are the feelings of boredom, the resentfull bitterness and passive / agressive nitpicking I had with WOT and now I feel refreshed and excited at the thought of a 10 book marathon through a new environment. But the question I have is whether in another 7 books time will I feel the same way about the Malazan Empire as I do the Wheel of Time. Should I finish what I started or walk away now.

# 1

I enjoy writing, I'm not good at it but that's not the point at this stage. In particular I find putting into words the kind of things that I'd never discuss with the missus or mates is a lovely cathartic experience.

I regularly moan loudly and without prejudice to anyone who'll listen (or whom unluckily finds themselves unable to escape because they are too polite to say they're terribly bored or because we are both stuck in a lift) that to me that I never get to finish a good daydream. I love losing myself in a ponder, be it ways of increasing the efficiency of the common squeegee to warlocks undercrackers. The key issue is that I have a real life as well which tends to get in the way. Often that means that I don't get to finish mulling over mullet technology over because, unreasonably, my boss will want me to do some work or some equally annoying interruption.

While explaining all this, and doing a fair bit of moaning about the aforementioned boss, to a friend on here I allowed myself to be convinced that a blog would be the ideal place for me to achieve a couple of aims. Firstly it will allow me to give vent to all the minor irritations of life in a city which I'm rapidly growing weary of (and which for some reason in my real life people never seem to tire of reading about)and the second - for me the more important idea, is to finish all the conversations I start with myself but for the reasons raised at the begging I never get to finish. I have a few ideas to explore in the next couple of weeks including a game that people can play on the tube, good names for dogs and how it should be possible to make a x-ray glasses..

So I am starting this blog with the intention of using it as a dumping point for all the

I'm not overly sure that anyone else will find it interesting, readable or even discoverable in the first place but at this point it's not important.

Apparently that's the hardest thing done