EXCERPTS FROM THE UPCOMING 'DO MIND IF I DON'T: A LONDON DIARY, 1996-2005'
Interview
I have a job interview at a copywriting agency. My housemates are mostly unimpressed, saying it’s dangerously close to the universally distrusted world of advertising.
“It’s just bunch of overpaid coke addicts stealing from the art world,” says one of them.
“That’s also half the people in the art world,” says another.
I feign indignity and tell them that the company is ethically minded and that they do a lot of work with clients who produce mail-outs for charities. I have no idea if this is true or not.
The day of the interview arrives. As I walk into the reception area of the office building, I notice how fashionable it is. It immediately feels like the place is staffed by people who are going to be uncomfortable dealing with me. They probably don’t employ anyone who isn’t good looking enough to at least be considered for catalogue modelling work. The woman behind the reception desk eyes my ordinary appearance suspiciously. “Just…take a seat…” she says.
I sit down among six or seven other people, presumably job candidates like me, but with much better personal grooming habits. A palpable sense of tension fills the reception area, but then I reply confidently when an assistant offers me a cosmopolitan choice of coffees. This calms everyone. They recognise that I at least have experience of their world.
I’m called in and the interview begins. The woman interviewing me is dressed in an 80s-looking power suit, like she just walked off a shoot for a Robert Palmer video, and is terrifyingly professional. I put my coffee down on her desk and sit back in the chair. The chair is just far enough back from the desk so that it’s now impossible to reach my coffee cup without awkwardly getting up. I mark the coffee down as a lost cause. Leave it, Paul. You blew the cup placement and now it's gone forever. There's a table right next to my chair. Why didn't I just put the cup on that? This is why I don't deserve a job in a chic copywriting company, I think.
Sitting back, I brace myself for thirty minutes in the inescapable glare of my own inadequacy. Instead of asking me any searching questions, though, she starts telling me that she’d been a flight attendant on Concorde a couple of decades ago. She talks about this for quite a long time. It’s quite interesting, but after ten minutes or so, I do start to wonder when we’re going to get to me.
Eventually she changes the subject, though we’re now mostly focusing on her telling me that I don’t really have the right skills for copywriting. I try to argue that thinking of English words to express an abstract idea was something I could probably make an attempt at given a chance, but I can’t think of any English words.
She then starts to probe me about working as a freelance travel writer, something I have gushed about on my CV, but which in reality I have very limited experience of. She tells me this was a career that she was “thinking of getting into”.
This is an unexpected twist. Now I’m thinking that this woman may have granted me an interview just so that she can ask me about ways to break into travel journalism. This is the opposite of what is supposed to be happening. It’s like she’s stealing a life coaching session or career advice. I have so little career advice to give, and here she is, trying to syphon off my tiny pool with her shiny corporate straw.
Added to this, I can’t very well say I don’t know anything about getting into travel journalism because it’s right there on my CV as work experience. On principle, though, I really don’t want to give her any information that might be in any way helpful. But then I think that maybe I actually am on the shortlist for the job and if I’m helpful, I’ll get to work here among the English words and exotic coffees. I half make a reach for my latte before abandoning the manoeuvre in its early stages, theatrically crossing my legs instead.
Realising it’s an unwinnable situation, I default to an M.O. that I’m comfortable with: a vague kind of cluelessness that sounds informed on a surface level but is in fact devoid of substance. I mumble something about there being “limited entry portals”, noting to myself that this is probably the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘portal’ in conversation and that those are the kind of words I could bring to the table if she’d take a chance on me.
She looks increasingly deflated as I deliver the bad news and politely dismisses me. I almost want to reassure her and tell her not to worry as I’m not successful at it either, but since she doesn’t even have the courtesy to lie and say they’ll let me know about the position, I keep quiet. Her loss, I say to myself, although I’m unsure as to what the loss actually is. Gradually discovering my professional limitations?
On the way out, a job having seemingly never even been on the table, I remind myself that the company doesn’t really produce charity mail-outs and that it is basically the unethical, universally distrusted advertising industry and that I am a better person for not working there. I would definitely work there given the chance.
Dancing
After a long week at yet another office, I join my temporary workmates for work drinks. We pitch up at an expensive bar in Covent Garden, though I realise I could actually just say "a bar in Covent Garden". The cocktails are ridiculously priced, and they all taste exactly the same, which is to say, like watery fruit juice.
My colleagues are drunk and want to get on the dance floor. They know better than to ask me, as I feel very uncomfortable dancing and have made this known around the office on more than one occasion. I stand at the bar, telling myself that it’s OK to be here because I’m aware of how terrible it is. A lot of people don’t even know how bad this venue is, I think. They think that this is a good time. I feel sorry for them, mostly so that I don't have to feel sorry for myself.
Suddenly, I’m approached by a woman. She’s way too good looking to be talking to me under her own steam, and I’m vaguely suspicious that one of my colleagues has asked her to chat to me for a dare. Looking around, though, I can’t see any of them. After a minute or two of conversation, she asks me if I want to dance.
“Of course I do! I love dancing!” I say.
She takes my hand and leads me onto the busy dance floor. Almost immediately, a song that she really likes starts playing, and she starts dancing much too energetically and in a kind of obnoxious way, encroaching without much consideration onto other people’s physical space. I start to tense up, but feel like I should indulge her as we’ve only just met. I’m smiling, but with my eyes I’m trying to ask her to take it down a notch, or at least just restrain her dance moves enough to avoid any physical confrontations.
As the song ends, she starts staggering about and lurches to the side of the floor, with me trying to hold her up. Suddenly I’m in sole charge of a semi-conscious stranger. It’s completely terrifying. I ask her where her friends are and she tells me that they had all left her ages ago and that she hates them and then suddenly she starts being sick on herself and I’m trying to keep her from passing out.
People are beginning to stand around, curious as to what’s going on and some of them are glaring at me as if to say, “Why don’t you take better care of your girlfriend?” I feel indignant as it must be very obvious that this girl is way too good looking for me, but then I worry even more and I hope that doesn’t further suggest to people that I might have put something in her drink because she’s so out of my league.
It’s almost impossible to convey with my body language to the general public that I’m not associated with this girl while at the same time not leaving her to black out in a public space. After what seems like about an hour, another woman comes to help. She’s one of the security staff and she’s pointedly asking me what the problem is.
“Look, she’s not with me, I’m just an innocent bystander,” I say. The bouncer looks dubious but says she’s in good hands and they go into the bathroom and I take the chance to hotfoot it out of the bar.
I get the night bus home, completely deflated. Two drunk young men behind me are cracking monkey nuts in their mouths and occasionally throwing the shells at the back of my head. I obviously can’t say anything in case they’re looking for a fight, so I pretend to fall asleep and eventually they get off the bus.
Spanish
I’ve had a regular freelancing gig at an office in Shoreditch in east London for a few weeks. I’ve been taking the bus four mornings a week to get there, and grabbing a coffee and some toast from the café that’s right at the bus stop where I get off.
After going there a few times, I had ascertained that the owner is Spanish. One morning, I pay for my coffee and toast and as he hands me my change, against all my better judgement, I decide to impress him.
“Muchas gracias!” I say.
He beams and says, “De nada!”
I leave, thinking what a gracious person I am, talking to him in his native language. I bet hardly anyone else talks to him in Spanish because people are so inconsiderate, I think.
The next morning, he sees me in the queue.
“Buenos dias!” I shout.
He laughs and says something about how nice it is to hear Spanish. I feel even more superior.
The next morning, I get off the bus and realise I have pretty much exhausted the entirety of my high school Spanish, and within our relationship, it would be weird to ask him the way to the beach or to randomly tell him that I enjoy walking in the countryside.
He sees me as I walk in.
“Hola!” I say.
He smiles. I feel like I have bought myself one more day.
It soon turns into a living nightmare, one where I feel like I am expected to display my knowledge of a new Spanish phrase every day. I find myself looking Spanish phrases up online and then writing them down, just so I can say them in the cafe. Within a week, I am trapped, each visit giving this guy the impression that I speak Spanish.
I start getting off the bus a stop early and going to the café near that bus stop instead. The servers there are Polish. I don’t know any Polish.
Wedding
A long-standing wedding commitment is coming up at the weekend. When the invitation was issued some months ago, the groom asked me if I’d be bringing a date.
“Of course I will!” I said. “Put me down for myself plus one!”
“What’s the name of the other person?” he asked.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not sure quite yet but I have a couple of months. I’m bound to find someone to bring to your wedding. People love weddings. Trust me, I’ll be bringing someone, alright!”
The groom sounded dubious. “It’s just a bit weird to just say ‘plus one’ on the invitation.”
“Trust me!” I said, hanging up the phone.
It’s now two days before the wedding and I still haven’t found anyone to go with me and the groom is emailing me to say that the bride is now very keen indeed to know the names for the placement cards at the wedding reception.
I email the groom back.
“My first choice date has fallen ill and might not recover in time, but I’m sure I can find someone else,” I write.
I realise almost immediately after sending the message that this doesn’t really buy me any time or put me in any better a position at all, and that now I will probably also have to make up a lie about a non-existent date and a mystery illness. I decide that I’ll email them back the next day and say that I caught whatever it was, too, and that I’m sorry but I probably won’t be able to make it after all.
In the end I go to the wedding alone. I feel indignant because no-one even asks me how my - albeit nonexistent - date is doing after falling ill. Don't they care about her?
There's a disco after the meal, and towards the end of the night, the DJ changes the music so that people can slow dance. Everyone pairs up apart from me. I sit at the side of the dance floor. The look I'm going for is “Don’t mind me. I’m happy for all of you, in love with each other, but I’m also happy to just sit here, thinking my whimsical thoughts.”
I see two women, who also came alone, dancing with each other happily. Half way through the song, they look at me and start laughing. I laugh as well. I don’t know what we’re all laughing about.
Bagels
I’ve always had an unsure relationship with bagels, largely due to a childhood incident that left me emotionally scarred. I grew up in a small, working-class town in the north-west of England in the 1970s and 80s, and as such had very limited horizons when it came to cuisine. Even relative staples like Indian and Chinese food seemed impossibly exotic, and meals largely consisted - as they did for most families in that time and place - of meat and two veg, pies, fish fingers, chips, that kind of thing.
When I was around 13, my secondary school took us to London for a day trip. I can’t remember what the focus of the trip was, and I think we mainly just wandered around in awe at the number of fast food outlets there were, but I vividly remember lunchtime. We’d been given some spending money to buy our own lunches. This was an incredibly exciting responsibility in its own right, never mind that we were in our nation’s capital, many of us for the first time. We were on the South Bank, close to the National Theater and the Royal Festival Hall, and as long as we didn’t stray too far, we were allowed to go and buy sandwiches at any one of the cafes or the food vendors that had set up along the riverside.
I wandered up to one of the food stands, not really knowing what they sold but relishing this small slice of freedom. There were pastries and snacks, and what looked to me like savoury donuts. Not knowing any better, I asked for one of the donuts. The man at the counter looked at me with no small amount of disgust and said in his sternest voice, “Actually, they’re called bagels.” I cringed inwardly with provincial embarrassment as people in the line behind me giggled. I was too flustered to continue the transaction and just mumbled “never mind, I’m not hungry” and retreated, the only consolation being that none of my classmates had witnessed the humiliation.
Fast forward fifteen years. I’m lucky enough to live near what is one of the best bagel shops in the city. I eat a bagel at least once a week, and I’ve been confidently identifying them correctly for over a decade. It is staffed, however, by dour, unsmiling servers who seemingly resent the fact that you are in their shop, giving them your custom. On a good day, I’ll ask for, say, a tuna and sweetcorn bagel, hand over the money and that’s that. There’s barely even a flicker of recognition from the staff. Once you get used to the system, it’s kind of reassuring in a strange way.
When I forget to take the correct money, and hand over a not-unreasonable £10 note for a £1 bagel, there’s a haughty snatch, the paper barely out of my wallet. This is followed by the handing back of a vengefully large pile of small change, seemingly made up of the maximum amount of coins needed to make up £9. Is it annoying? Yes, but I bring it on myself.
There’s a laughably misleading sign on the wall of the shop saying “If you can’t see the item you want, just ask us and we’ll make it fresh for you”, though I’ve yet to witness anyone negotiate even the early stages of this procedure without being verbally menaced. I would love to see this in action sometime.
This morning, the man in front of me is delivering his bagel order, the servers waiting in the time-honoured, stoical fashion; no words exchanged, no glances or any small talk. This annoys him.
“You miserable cow!” he shouts, loud enough for the entire shop to hear him. “Jesus, what a miserable woman! Cheer up why don’t ya?!”
This is it, I think. The servers here barely need an excuse to be aggressive. They can really let rip into this guy. Oh, you’ve got it coming, buddy, I think. I assume the posture of a man about to witness a public takedown, perhaps the most mortifying incident involving bagel ordering since that fateful day on the South Bank.
But no. The server’s face cracks, and there’s something approaching a giggle, her face visibly brightening. “I’m so sorry,” says the girl. “I’m having a bad day but no need for me to be rude, please have a complimentary bagel, anything you like.” The man asks for and receives a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel. A top of the range freebie, dished out willingly and cheerfully.
“Next!” the assistant shouts, instantly settling back into her regular demeanour. I’m still in shock, barely able to vocalise my order. “Tuna…and…sweetcorn,” I say quietly, my voice cracking as I anxiously clutch my ten pound note.
Burger King
I’m in Burger King in Leicester Square, grabbing a quick Spicy Beanburger before going to see a film at the cinema. They never have any ready, which at least means you know that they haven’t been sat on the rack for four hours. It’s worth the wait for the relative freshness, I tell myself.
As I lean on the counter waiting, the next person orders. It’s a middle-aged Scottish woman. She’s really strung out and she’s being quite aggressive and loud. She wants a coffee, and she’s asking what the maximum amount of packets of sugar is that she can have for free. The assistant doesn’t understand because the Scottish woman is really drunk and her accent is very broad. She yells at the young man, saying that she wants eight packets of sugar.
“I’m an epileptic,” she shouts. “I need at least eight packets for my blood sugar.”
The assistant looks even more confused. I decide to take control of the situation and make everyone’s lives much easier.
“I think she means ‘diabetic’, not ‘epileptic’,” I tell the server cheerily, turning to give a quick glancing wink to the woman as well. I’m such a diplomat, I think. I give knowing nods to both people, thinking how much I’m helping out and smoothing things over.
The Scottish woman gets really angry. “What the f**k do you know, you f**ker?” she says. “Why don’t you mind your own f**king business?”
This was an unforeseen development. “I was just trying to help everyone,” I say.
“Well then, I'll just say this to you,” she says. “F**k you!"
As she says this, a worried-looking manager approaches with a handful of sugar packets and hands them over to the woman. I look away sheepishly. Her coffee also arrives and I’m just hoping that she can resist the urge to throw the scalding contents of her cup to my face. I don’t deserve a burned face and lifelong scars, I think. Not for just trying to help a fake diabetic.
Luckily, she’s pacified by the arrival of free sugar. She wanders away, muttering. “Don’t try and tell ME I’m not epileptic, sunshine,” she says.
I go back to waiting for my veggie burger. Everyone waiting in the line is glaring at me.
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Interview
I have a job interview at a copywriting agency. My housemates are mostly unimpressed, saying it’s dangerously close to the universally distrusted world of advertising.
“It’s just bunch of overpaid coke addicts stealing from the art world,” says one of them.
“That’s also half the people in the art world,” says another.
I feign indignity and tell them that the company is ethically minded and that they do a lot of work with clients who produce mail-outs for charities. I have no idea if this is true or not.
The day of the interview arrives. As I walk into the reception area of the office building, I notice how fashionable it is. It immediately feels like the place is staffed by people who are going to be uncomfortable dealing with me. They probably don’t employ anyone who isn’t good looking enough to at least be considered for catalogue modelling work. The woman behind the reception desk eyes my ordinary appearance suspiciously. “Just…take a seat…” she says.
I sit down among six or seven other people, presumably job candidates like me, but with much better personal grooming habits. A palpable sense of tension fills the reception area, but then I reply confidently when an assistant offers me a cosmopolitan choice of coffees. This calms everyone. They recognise that I at least have experience of their world.
I’m called in and the interview begins. The woman interviewing me is dressed in an 80s-looking power suit, like she just walked off a shoot for a Robert Palmer video, and is terrifyingly professional. I put my coffee down on her desk and sit back in the chair. The chair is just far enough back from the desk so that it’s now impossible to reach my coffee cup without awkwardly getting up. I mark the coffee down as a lost cause. Leave it, Paul. You blew the cup placement and now it's gone forever. There's a table right next to my chair. Why didn't I just put the cup on that? This is why I don't deserve a job in a chic copywriting company, I think.
Sitting back, I brace myself for thirty minutes in the inescapable glare of my own inadequacy. Instead of asking me any searching questions, though, she starts telling me that she’d been a flight attendant on Concorde a couple of decades ago. She talks about this for quite a long time. It’s quite interesting, but after ten minutes or so, I do start to wonder when we’re going to get to me.
Eventually she changes the subject, though we’re now mostly focusing on her telling me that I don’t really have the right skills for copywriting. I try to argue that thinking of English words to express an abstract idea was something I could probably make an attempt at given a chance, but I can’t think of any English words.
She then starts to probe me about working as a freelance travel writer, something I have gushed about on my CV, but which in reality I have very limited experience of. She tells me this was a career that she was “thinking of getting into”.
This is an unexpected twist. Now I’m thinking that this woman may have granted me an interview just so that she can ask me about ways to break into travel journalism. This is the opposite of what is supposed to be happening. It’s like she’s stealing a life coaching session or career advice. I have so little career advice to give, and here she is, trying to syphon off my tiny pool with her shiny corporate straw.
Added to this, I can’t very well say I don’t know anything about getting into travel journalism because it’s right there on my CV as work experience. On principle, though, I really don’t want to give her any information that might be in any way helpful. But then I think that maybe I actually am on the shortlist for the job and if I’m helpful, I’ll get to work here among the English words and exotic coffees. I half make a reach for my latte before abandoning the manoeuvre in its early stages, theatrically crossing my legs instead.
Realising it’s an unwinnable situation, I default to an M.O. that I’m comfortable with: a vague kind of cluelessness that sounds informed on a surface level but is in fact devoid of substance. I mumble something about there being “limited entry portals”, noting to myself that this is probably the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘portal’ in conversation and that those are the kind of words I could bring to the table if she’d take a chance on me.
She looks increasingly deflated as I deliver the bad news and politely dismisses me. I almost want to reassure her and tell her not to worry as I’m not successful at it either, but since she doesn’t even have the courtesy to lie and say they’ll let me know about the position, I keep quiet. Her loss, I say to myself, although I’m unsure as to what the loss actually is. Gradually discovering my professional limitations?
On the way out, a job having seemingly never even been on the table, I remind myself that the company doesn’t really produce charity mail-outs and that it is basically the unethical, universally distrusted advertising industry and that I am a better person for not working there. I would definitely work there given the chance.
Dancing
After a long week at yet another office, I join my temporary workmates for work drinks. We pitch up at an expensive bar in Covent Garden, though I realise I could actually just say "a bar in Covent Garden". The cocktails are ridiculously priced, and they all taste exactly the same, which is to say, like watery fruit juice.
My colleagues are drunk and want to get on the dance floor. They know better than to ask me, as I feel very uncomfortable dancing and have made this known around the office on more than one occasion. I stand at the bar, telling myself that it’s OK to be here because I’m aware of how terrible it is. A lot of people don’t even know how bad this venue is, I think. They think that this is a good time. I feel sorry for them, mostly so that I don't have to feel sorry for myself.
Suddenly, I’m approached by a woman. She’s way too good looking to be talking to me under her own steam, and I’m vaguely suspicious that one of my colleagues has asked her to chat to me for a dare. Looking around, though, I can’t see any of them. After a minute or two of conversation, she asks me if I want to dance.
“Of course I do! I love dancing!” I say.
She takes my hand and leads me onto the busy dance floor. Almost immediately, a song that she really likes starts playing, and she starts dancing much too energetically and in a kind of obnoxious way, encroaching without much consideration onto other people’s physical space. I start to tense up, but feel like I should indulge her as we’ve only just met. I’m smiling, but with my eyes I’m trying to ask her to take it down a notch, or at least just restrain her dance moves enough to avoid any physical confrontations.
As the song ends, she starts staggering about and lurches to the side of the floor, with me trying to hold her up. Suddenly I’m in sole charge of a semi-conscious stranger. It’s completely terrifying. I ask her where her friends are and she tells me that they had all left her ages ago and that she hates them and then suddenly she starts being sick on herself and I’m trying to keep her from passing out.
People are beginning to stand around, curious as to what’s going on and some of them are glaring at me as if to say, “Why don’t you take better care of your girlfriend?” I feel indignant as it must be very obvious that this girl is way too good looking for me, but then I worry even more and I hope that doesn’t further suggest to people that I might have put something in her drink because she’s so out of my league.
It’s almost impossible to convey with my body language to the general public that I’m not associated with this girl while at the same time not leaving her to black out in a public space. After what seems like about an hour, another woman comes to help. She’s one of the security staff and she’s pointedly asking me what the problem is.
“Look, she’s not with me, I’m just an innocent bystander,” I say. The bouncer looks dubious but says she’s in good hands and they go into the bathroom and I take the chance to hotfoot it out of the bar.
I get the night bus home, completely deflated. Two drunk young men behind me are cracking monkey nuts in their mouths and occasionally throwing the shells at the back of my head. I obviously can’t say anything in case they’re looking for a fight, so I pretend to fall asleep and eventually they get off the bus.
Spanish
I’ve had a regular freelancing gig at an office in Shoreditch in east London for a few weeks. I’ve been taking the bus four mornings a week to get there, and grabbing a coffee and some toast from the café that’s right at the bus stop where I get off.
After going there a few times, I had ascertained that the owner is Spanish. One morning, I pay for my coffee and toast and as he hands me my change, against all my better judgement, I decide to impress him.
“Muchas gracias!” I say.
He beams and says, “De nada!”
I leave, thinking what a gracious person I am, talking to him in his native language. I bet hardly anyone else talks to him in Spanish because people are so inconsiderate, I think.
The next morning, he sees me in the queue.
“Buenos dias!” I shout.
He laughs and says something about how nice it is to hear Spanish. I feel even more superior.
The next morning, I get off the bus and realise I have pretty much exhausted the entirety of my high school Spanish, and within our relationship, it would be weird to ask him the way to the beach or to randomly tell him that I enjoy walking in the countryside.
He sees me as I walk in.
“Hola!” I say.
He smiles. I feel like I have bought myself one more day.
It soon turns into a living nightmare, one where I feel like I am expected to display my knowledge of a new Spanish phrase every day. I find myself looking Spanish phrases up online and then writing them down, just so I can say them in the cafe. Within a week, I am trapped, each visit giving this guy the impression that I speak Spanish.
I start getting off the bus a stop early and going to the café near that bus stop instead. The servers there are Polish. I don’t know any Polish.
Wedding
A long-standing wedding commitment is coming up at the weekend. When the invitation was issued some months ago, the groom asked me if I’d be bringing a date.
“Of course I will!” I said. “Put me down for myself plus one!”
“What’s the name of the other person?” he asked.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not sure quite yet but I have a couple of months. I’m bound to find someone to bring to your wedding. People love weddings. Trust me, I’ll be bringing someone, alright!”
The groom sounded dubious. “It’s just a bit weird to just say ‘plus one’ on the invitation.”
“Trust me!” I said, hanging up the phone.
It’s now two days before the wedding and I still haven’t found anyone to go with me and the groom is emailing me to say that the bride is now very keen indeed to know the names for the placement cards at the wedding reception.
I email the groom back.
“My first choice date has fallen ill and might not recover in time, but I’m sure I can find someone else,” I write.
I realise almost immediately after sending the message that this doesn’t really buy me any time or put me in any better a position at all, and that now I will probably also have to make up a lie about a non-existent date and a mystery illness. I decide that I’ll email them back the next day and say that I caught whatever it was, too, and that I’m sorry but I probably won’t be able to make it after all.
In the end I go to the wedding alone. I feel indignant because no-one even asks me how my - albeit nonexistent - date is doing after falling ill. Don't they care about her?
There's a disco after the meal, and towards the end of the night, the DJ changes the music so that people can slow dance. Everyone pairs up apart from me. I sit at the side of the dance floor. The look I'm going for is “Don’t mind me. I’m happy for all of you, in love with each other, but I’m also happy to just sit here, thinking my whimsical thoughts.”
I see two women, who also came alone, dancing with each other happily. Half way through the song, they look at me and start laughing. I laugh as well. I don’t know what we’re all laughing about.
Bagels
I’ve always had an unsure relationship with bagels, largely due to a childhood incident that left me emotionally scarred. I grew up in a small, working-class town in the north-west of England in the 1970s and 80s, and as such had very limited horizons when it came to cuisine. Even relative staples like Indian and Chinese food seemed impossibly exotic, and meals largely consisted - as they did for most families in that time and place - of meat and two veg, pies, fish fingers, chips, that kind of thing.
When I was around 13, my secondary school took us to London for a day trip. I can’t remember what the focus of the trip was, and I think we mainly just wandered around in awe at the number of fast food outlets there were, but I vividly remember lunchtime. We’d been given some spending money to buy our own lunches. This was an incredibly exciting responsibility in its own right, never mind that we were in our nation’s capital, many of us for the first time. We were on the South Bank, close to the National Theater and the Royal Festival Hall, and as long as we didn’t stray too far, we were allowed to go and buy sandwiches at any one of the cafes or the food vendors that had set up along the riverside.
I wandered up to one of the food stands, not really knowing what they sold but relishing this small slice of freedom. There were pastries and snacks, and what looked to me like savoury donuts. Not knowing any better, I asked for one of the donuts. The man at the counter looked at me with no small amount of disgust and said in his sternest voice, “Actually, they’re called bagels.” I cringed inwardly with provincial embarrassment as people in the line behind me giggled. I was too flustered to continue the transaction and just mumbled “never mind, I’m not hungry” and retreated, the only consolation being that none of my classmates had witnessed the humiliation.
Fast forward fifteen years. I’m lucky enough to live near what is one of the best bagel shops in the city. I eat a bagel at least once a week, and I’ve been confidently identifying them correctly for over a decade. It is staffed, however, by dour, unsmiling servers who seemingly resent the fact that you are in their shop, giving them your custom. On a good day, I’ll ask for, say, a tuna and sweetcorn bagel, hand over the money and that’s that. There’s barely even a flicker of recognition from the staff. Once you get used to the system, it’s kind of reassuring in a strange way.
When I forget to take the correct money, and hand over a not-unreasonable £10 note for a £1 bagel, there’s a haughty snatch, the paper barely out of my wallet. This is followed by the handing back of a vengefully large pile of small change, seemingly made up of the maximum amount of coins needed to make up £9. Is it annoying? Yes, but I bring it on myself.
There’s a laughably misleading sign on the wall of the shop saying “If you can’t see the item you want, just ask us and we’ll make it fresh for you”, though I’ve yet to witness anyone negotiate even the early stages of this procedure without being verbally menaced. I would love to see this in action sometime.
This morning, the man in front of me is delivering his bagel order, the servers waiting in the time-honoured, stoical fashion; no words exchanged, no glances or any small talk. This annoys him.
“You miserable cow!” he shouts, loud enough for the entire shop to hear him. “Jesus, what a miserable woman! Cheer up why don’t ya?!”
This is it, I think. The servers here barely need an excuse to be aggressive. They can really let rip into this guy. Oh, you’ve got it coming, buddy, I think. I assume the posture of a man about to witness a public takedown, perhaps the most mortifying incident involving bagel ordering since that fateful day on the South Bank.
But no. The server’s face cracks, and there’s something approaching a giggle, her face visibly brightening. “I’m so sorry,” says the girl. “I’m having a bad day but no need for me to be rude, please have a complimentary bagel, anything you like.” The man asks for and receives a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel. A top of the range freebie, dished out willingly and cheerfully.
“Next!” the assistant shouts, instantly settling back into her regular demeanour. I’m still in shock, barely able to vocalise my order. “Tuna…and…sweetcorn,” I say quietly, my voice cracking as I anxiously clutch my ten pound note.
Burger King
I’m in Burger King in Leicester Square, grabbing a quick Spicy Beanburger before going to see a film at the cinema. They never have any ready, which at least means you know that they haven’t been sat on the rack for four hours. It’s worth the wait for the relative freshness, I tell myself.
As I lean on the counter waiting, the next person orders. It’s a middle-aged Scottish woman. She’s really strung out and she’s being quite aggressive and loud. She wants a coffee, and she’s asking what the maximum amount of packets of sugar is that she can have for free. The assistant doesn’t understand because the Scottish woman is really drunk and her accent is very broad. She yells at the young man, saying that she wants eight packets of sugar.
“I’m an epileptic,” she shouts. “I need at least eight packets for my blood sugar.”
The assistant looks even more confused. I decide to take control of the situation and make everyone’s lives much easier.
“I think she means ‘diabetic’, not ‘epileptic’,” I tell the server cheerily, turning to give a quick glancing wink to the woman as well. I’m such a diplomat, I think. I give knowing nods to both people, thinking how much I’m helping out and smoothing things over.
The Scottish woman gets really angry. “What the f**k do you know, you f**ker?” she says. “Why don’t you mind your own f**king business?”
This was an unforeseen development. “I was just trying to help everyone,” I say.
“Well then, I'll just say this to you,” she says. “F**k you!"
As she says this, a worried-looking manager approaches with a handful of sugar packets and hands them over to the woman. I look away sheepishly. Her coffee also arrives and I’m just hoping that she can resist the urge to throw the scalding contents of her cup to my face. I don’t deserve a burned face and lifelong scars, I think. Not for just trying to help a fake diabetic.
Luckily, she’s pacified by the arrival of free sugar. She wanders away, muttering. “Don’t try and tell ME I’m not epileptic, sunshine,” she says.
I go back to waiting for my veggie burger. Everyone waiting in the line is glaring at me.
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