MADE IN CHINA

Isn’t public transport wonderful? I mean you just get on a bus, sit down and it takes you where you want to go.
You can look out the window, daydream, you can even doze if you want to. You don’t have to concentrate, like you do when you are driving a car or riding a motorbike.

And – you get to meet the public: the great unwashed, as someone unkindly called them.

Take yesterday, for instance: a chap came and sat by me and immediately started a conversation. Now I like that. I know that some people hate to have their personal space – as they like to call it – invaded. Not me, mate; you can invade my personal space any time.

Anyway, he began by talking about the local elections, and from there we got on to the economy, and the threat of China, as the new ‘economic superpower’

‘Of course, everything is made in China, now’ he said. He paused. ‘Except my wife: she was made in Oldham’. He seemed to reflect for a minute or so, then, ‘Come to think of it, I wish she had been made in China – I’ve always fancied a Chinese bird.’

He got off at the next stop – which was lucky because I couldn’t think of a suitable reply.


I am exceeding glum tonight. I won’t bore you with the details, but if one could be ‘clinically fed up’ then that is what I would be.

I once said to a psychiatrist (I met him down the off-licence) ‘Surely you should be able to think your way out of depression?’
‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘but you can just as easily think your way into depression.’

I think I could have been a psychiatrist – trouble is, you have to be a doctor first. And I couldn’t manage that. All that peering at people’s bits and stuff. And then, the ones that come to see you with nasty diseases, and breathe all over you. Oh no, I wouldn’t fancy that.

There is so much bothering me tonight. A lot has to do with money – or the lack of it. It is more than that, though – much more. But nobody wants to listen to your problems – unless you pay them forty quid an hour.

So I will take myself off to bed, and see what the morrow brings.