random anecdotes

I bought a leather bracelet on Sunday. But when I got on the metro and decided to put it on, I realise the shop had left on the security tag. I tried to pull it off, but it was attached by a metal wire, with instructions to use scissors for removal. The guy next to me had been staring at the bracelet and asked if I needed help. He seemed friendly so I showed him the problem. He proceeded to remove the wiring…with his teeth! He just bit through the metal like a rat, handed the bracelet back to me and said “here you go, oh, and I am Ferenc by the way.” Ferenc? So you must be Hungarian!” I said, certain that Ferencs can only occur amongst one particular nationality. But I was wrong. This Ferenc was South African, and had never set foot in Hungary. His father had been of Hungarian origin, but had only stayed with his mother long enough to give him a pseudo Hungarian name. and at that point, Ferenc the metal biting Boer got off the train and went on his way.

Nearly every day I stop by a corner shop to by a Diet Coke. The place is run by an Indian guy, and every day he is reading a porn magazine. Every day I pretend not to notice the pictures of naked women with improbable proportions. Today the image was so incredible I confess it caught my shocked eye for a moment. The man saw. “my wife left me. 10 years ago.” He said. He handed me my change and went back, glum faced, to his porn.

At lunch a colleague starts a surreal story about the mother of one of his kids who was previously dating one of FBI’s most wanted men. He was killed. She later broke into my colleague’s flat and stole designer clothes from his present live-in girlfriend. He confiscated her passport and held it for ransom to get back the clothes. The baby is really cute.

Another colleague has started coming to work in a face mask to prevent swine flu. He is convinced that “the chavs” (of whom he lives in fear) are all going to get it and breathe on him on the metro.