In to the Maelstrom

Bloody hell, that was a swift and brutal end to summer. Not seen weather like this in a while. It really wasn't that bad first thing - but by 7.30 it was blowing gale force off the sea and lashing rain through the fog - been like that for 12 hours now - I was glad to be in someone else's heated studio.

The train at 8.10 was full of schoolchildren back after the hols, all talking at the same time, all the girls were very heavily made up from the age of 10 or above - and they go to the 'good' school.

At Bexhill - a group of horribly middle class 30-somethings got on, one was a Eurasian girl of about 25 with an expensive folding bicycle - I've never seen one that folds up so small. She stood next to me chatting to a dull 'nice but dim' type that she obviously fancied. She was excruciating - the kind of person we all dread standing next to. I was subject to her entire life story over 50 mins.

She's just broken her toe while out on a 10 mile run ( and a woman had trodden on her toe at Notting Hill Carnival, "in HEELS!!!"), she's annoyed because she's climbing Everest in 3 months and "you can't take a disability to Nepal".  When she spoke she dropped in as many Americanisms as she could manage, she must have spent time there, and had a very juvenile turn of phrase and used that annoying dipthong that makes everything sound like a question. Whatever it is that she does - she considers herself a renaissance woman, she's apparently an expert and authority on social media and has hundreds of followers, has written a paper on 'social media fatigue' and also worked as a photographer ( "I'm doing a friends wedding, they want something funky, offbeat and original - like me, that's why I agreed to do it " ). She contributes to 'dozens' of blogs and journals - has spent 6 months in Iceland " Just photographing the landscape, it's sooooo amazing and alien, it was very spiritual"  She now wants to spend time in the Hebridies - after Nepal, of course - and complained that soooo many people need her that she has so little time for herself - "I have a life too, you know!" - she was reading a self help book ( the type with cartoon illustrations ) called - 'How to focus on what YOU want from your life, and how to get it'. I had a few suggestions. By Lewes I wanted to punch her face repeatedly until it was a bloody pulp.

The bloke she was chatting up had just come back from a Highland Games "Yah - like the Queen was there, and David Cameron, like really close to us" and he said something like " I'm probably going to try my hand at something else - I mean, I'm not going to be a barrister for EVER!"

I spent today working in an office with a bloke who has Cup-a-Soup for lunch and listens to 80's music all day - harmonising with a whistling humming noise. He like Van Halen and Bruce Springstein.


( just to say - I have nothing whatsoever against the middle classes - I spent years trying to join them - the persons above would have been utter cunts regardless of their social background... come on, admit it... we all know one )