Keep To the Left!

I often get stopped in the street and recognised, and I'm always asked the same thing.

"Hey, you're that Fantastic Mr Ox chap aren't you?"
"Yes, Yes I am. would you like an autograph?"
"Oh, yes please! But can you first answer me a question - What is your blog actually about?"

Well, to stop the man in the street from needing to ask me this question again, I will tell you now.

Fantastic Mr Ox's Rubbish Blog is a blog about life itself. My life, in particular.
It's about things I see, things that interest me, things that annoy me, things that bore me, things that probably bore you. It's about things.

Sometimes, my life feels quite monotonous and I struggle to write about anything of interest as very few things have interested me, or indeed happened to me. Sometimes, I notice a thing happening, and think "That'll be brilliant to put in the blog!" but when I get down to write it, realise that there is very little to say about that thing and it's probably not worth the time writing it down.

One such incident occurred yesterday evening as I was walking twixt mainline train and tube at St Pancras station, via the underground walkway that links the two.

There was a man walking ahead of me on the left hand side of the barrier who all of a sudden threw a massive wobbly. The reason for this was that someone was walking in the opposite direction to him, and was not keeping to the left.

Instead of adjusting his walk to avoid a collision as any normal human being would do though, he went out of his way to walk into the man coming towards him, shouting "Keep to the left! Keep to the Left!! Keep to the Left!"

As if this wasn't enough, he brandished an umbrella and used it to whack the man on his back as he passed him, adding to the verbal assault with "We Keep to the left in this country, you bastards!"

I burst into laughter myself, but most of the other commuters saw the incident for the true horror it was- the actions of a man with a mental problem. There was another lady about to also receive a poke with his umbrella who hadn't kept to the left, but very quickly took evasive action and ducked under the barrier out of the enraged idiot's way.

He looked around heartily chuffed at having made his point. He even gave me a little "Tsk, people eh?" flick of the head when he noticed me looking at him. It was quite unnerving as I didn't wish to engage with this lunatic, but I did manage to avoid a jab of his umbrella and I guess the whole escapade made me more likely to keep to the left if I'm ever down there again.

I've summarised the events in this accurate, to scale picture. Double-click on it for all it's glory.

And that's all there is to that story really. It really happened and ended up being rather uneventful after the initial umbrella-smacking. The nutter walked calmly off. The man attacked shook his head and also walked off, and that was that. Sorry if you were expecting it to be the start of a mad umbrella-rampage.

You'd be amazed how many 'drafts' I've got lurking in the background of this blog unpublished; half-heartedly abandoned for being shit or not striking the right cord. Amazed more so perhaps, considering some of the utter dross I have published.

Like this one.