Monday, February 17, 2014

That man is dead!


Hellloooooo..........

It's never a good start to a night out, when a man pretends to be dead.

It gets even worse when you end up in a morbid pantomime with the police.

To explain (for I fear those details alone don't quite provide the full story), myself and a friend were on the tube, no doubt nattering away about climate change, political unrest, or the like, when the driver stopped the train and made this announcement.

'To the ladies and gentlemen in the same carriage as two police officers, can someone please check if the man in the black puffa jacket is okay? He doesn't look very good.'

Thus began a series of moments, which would be quite nicely paired with a fast-paced, farcical bit of music, and Kenneth Williams.

The policeman were standing in front of the man in question, and struggled, for a sustained period of time, to locate him.

At one point (despite how much I really do hate the real thing) a few of us genuinely yelled out, 'He's behind you!!'

I suppose it didn't bode well, that the driver himself chose to ignore the policeman, and direct his plea for help at a bunch of London commuters, (which lets face it, would take your seat if you fainted and slid off it, by climbing over your listless body).

When they did manage to figure out where he was (having lost out on any chance of saving his life, had he been in need of it), they then tried to wake him up.

He did not wake up.

Collectively, as a carriage, as a cohesive unit, which required no words whatsoever, we all decided:

'He's dead'.

In my mind, I'd already attended my first support group. We'd hugged the woman next to him, understanding that she was suffering the most.

We'd even comforted the Policeman - 'There's nothing you could have done. Well, except maybe been a bit quicker in finding the only passed out man in a puffa jacket, instead of walking in tiny circles around his seat, staring at one another.'

When he did finally wake up, which was incredibly sudden, the rest of us exploded into a kind of hysterical laughter. We clapped our hands, and made friends, 'Did you think he was dead?' 'God, I was sure he was dead.' 'Hurrah, he's not dead!' It was lovely.

And trust me, when the standard interaction on those things, is having a large pair of breasts pressing into your back, experiencing the slow, wafting dance of someones BO around your nostrils, or being smacked round the head with a rucksack full of books - you fucking appreciate.