nostrils

I had an excellent meal at Mrs B’s: leek and potato soup, homemade steak and ale pie and jam-sponge pudding – oh and a cup of coffee. I then took a leisurely stroll around the town. Aren’t there a lot of wheelchairs about nowadays! And also twin-buggies! There must be an awful lot of twins being born. Perhaps it’s due to all those fertilisation programmes.

Anyway I made my necessary purchases and still had time on my hands, so I re- visited the library. Same old faces around the newspaper table. I felt sorry for them. I mean it’s a shame they have nothing better to do than to while away their days in a public library.
I sat down at the one vacant seat. The man next to me was reading the Daily Telegraph and picking his nose! Picking his nose whilst reading the Telegraph!
I gave him a disapproving look. He must have thought I wanted the paper (which ordinarily I would have, but not after he had been reading it). ‘There you go, mate’ he said, and thrust the paper into my hands before I could say ‘no thanks’. He got up and shambled away in the direction of the lavatories. I put the broadsheet carefully down on the table.

I have always thought that it would be a good idea to have little cubicles in public buildings where people could go to pick their nose. They need not be elaborate affairs: a chair, washstand, paper towels. Then you could go and have a jolly good root up the old proboscis without offending other people and, importantly, avoiding the possibility of a pandemic.

Interestingly, have you noticed how many people pick their nose whilst driving? They think that because they are in a car no one can see them. I heard that it may shortly be an offence to pick your nose whilst driving a car – just like it is with mobile phones – because of the danger to other road users - and yourself.

There was a story in the newspaper (not the Telegraph) about a woman, driving one of those 4 x 4 Shogun things - probably coming back from the school run - and she was picking her nose, quite vigorously. Oblivious of the road surface – as is typical of 4 x 4 drivers – she hit a ‘speed bump’ at a fair lick. Her finger was rammed up her nostril causing such pain as to make her lose control of the vehicle. She mounted the pavement and, narrowly missing a traffic-warden, demolished a bus-shelter.
The warden, when he had recovered his composure, acted swiftly: whipping out his cell-phone he called both the police and ambulance services, and then went to the lady’s assistance.
She was still in the drivers seat, screaming , and with her right index finger firmly stuck up her nose. Seizing the problem digit, he attempted to wrench it free of its nostril niche. Unfortunately, being untrained in first-aid he was a over zealous. The lady had those long talons of fingernails which you get from constant manicuring and having an au pair, and this particular nail snapped off as her finger came free.
Luckily the ambulance arrived and she was rushed to the A & E Dept of the local hospital, where surgeons removed half an inch of crimson fingernail, lodged perilously close to the brain.

The police later charged her with ‘driving without due care’, and the local council presented her with a bill for a new bus-shelter.

I said that Christmas brings on my OCD. I should have said it exacerbates it. Really it there all the time these days – in the background. It starts from the moment I awake in the morning: intrusive thoughts, having to get the ‘right’ thought into my head before I can move on. Of course, mostly I can control it, but any special occasion, anything ritualistic makes it worse.
I try to think when it all started: I can’t remember being troubled by it before I started Grammar school, at the age of eleven.

On my way home, glumness descends with the darkness. I say ‘home’ - of course it’s not really my home, but where is my home: Wynorin – the marital home – has been sold by my erstwhile wife, and St Botolph’s was more refuge than home. Perhaps my home is in my head.

The cold and the wind and the rain drag my spirits further down, and when I reach Briarwood, beaten and bedraggled, they are in no way lifted by the sombre mood prevailing in that house.