Alan Coleman

I don’t think we spend enough time appreciating the mundane things in life. So concerned are we with our highly strung and vain accessories, that we forget to value the things that make our everyday life an easier place to be.

The plastic lunch box is a prime example of this.
It lasts for years, cost practically nothing to buy and can be used to store anything from sandwiches to maggots. They’ll quite happily sit for months at the back of a cupboard before being called to perform some thankless task, after which they’ll be slung aside again like they never existed. You can put them in the freezer for years, or leave them out in the garden with worms in, they simply don’t mind. Even better, next time you find a single fresh prawn lying around at a friends house, seal it into a plastic lunch box and throw it to the back of a cupboard. Give it a couple of weeks, and the unlucky individual who cracks that little baby open will be met by a smell so foul, it’ll make FC’s shit smell like Mr Matey.

I walk past the Apollo and through the subway on the way home from work, the mild mannered Tracy Chapman fans place their MacDonalds debris neatly on the staircase for someone else’s children to pick up. The more inoffensive the music, the more offensive the fans. Don’t believe me? Watch Last Night of The Proms.

The couple get on the Piccadilly line and sit next to me in what must be well over grands worth of clothes. He’s wearing one of those thin stripy scarves that are everywhere and carrying a small stiff paper carrier bag with rope handles, ribbon and gold lettering. It’s more like a handbag than anything else. I think about what could be in it, a pair of cashmere socks perhaps or even new stripy scarf, but then realize that it doesn’t matter. I try to read but am fascinated by their conversation about the lost eight grand, the insurance and other details of the disposable income. Following them off at South Kensington I can’t help but notice his bald patch, far worse than mine but not as bad as someone like Phil Collins.

Mandy’s out all evening so it’s to M&S for some Salmon and potato fishcakes, delicious. There’s loads of push pigs in there grabbing the ready meals and elbowing me out of the way, thank god I’m not single. One particular push pig has her heels stowed in one of the above mentioned cardboard bags and wears trainers with a smart suit. Ridiculous, wear a £500 suit to work then get changed into a pair of Reeboks under the desk before sloping off. A soon as she has kids that’ll be it, the same toweling tracksuit for the next eighteen years of her life, then it’ll all end in tears on a reality makeover show.

I get home and switch on the box, a predictably boring Household Cavalry officer struts and talks to working men like children. They’re all from the same mold heading towards those same jobs in the city – a friend of the family, charity.

Sometimes I look at us and think we’re not so bad, other times, like last Thursday, I quite literally despair of it all.

We met some of Mandy’s friends last night in central London, and with quite a few of them staying in town it was decided that the best place to meet up was Covent Garden. Which can only mean one thing, The Punch and Judy.

I remember thinking how dire the place was about 13 years ago when I went there with a load of people I was working with in London. Standing on that balcony on a sunny afternoon watching all those stupid acts down on the street. Blokes leaping around in costumes spending half an hour working the crowd up to expect something amazing, then one hits the other over the head with an inflatable hammer to the sound of an old car horn. Hilarious.

At least yesterday it was dark when we turned up so I didn’t have to endure the so called entertainment, although on the way there we did pass someone playing a saw with a violin bow. Boring.

We arrived early last night, which is unusual for us, and the short wait for Mandy’s friends gave me ample opportunity for a nose around. Upstairs was full of stag nights, men slightly awkward in smart casuals looking like they’d much rather be at home watching X factor on a warm sofa. There’s more bloke parties downstairs, all trying to look harder than the next with shaved heads and tight fitting shirts, even if they tried it wouldn’t be possible to look any more gay. But hey, blokes out on the piss and who am I to criticize.

While I wait at the bar to spend £8.20 on two drinks, I am overwhelmed by something that afflicts most central London pubs.

Filth, it is unrelentingly dirty.

Every surface not covered in empty glasses is coated in a sticky residue that prevents touching. The floor, sticky again, is littered with cigarette butts and wrappers that have been discarded because there are no ashtrays. As wide eyed tourist gaze disappointedly at the cheap veneer, smells of toilets and foul lager permeate every pore.

The owners, maybe a hotel chain based in Leamington Spa, probably offset any customer experience against the outrageous profits gleaned from a combination of their own greed and their customers’ stupidity. The whole place reminds of Chelsea FC. Dirty and overpriced.

As I look around at the tacky theme fittings and fake blackboards, I wonder how much of a field day Dickens would have in this modern London squalor. He wouldn’t believe his luck, a reeking cesspit that sucks in unsuspecting tourists and dribbling louts. Besides the freakish customers there’s enough ground in dirt and contemptuous greed to write an entire trilogy.

Never, ever, again.