Social Anomalies

I'm not sure if it was just bad luck or the Jeremy Kyle Roadshow had just hit town, but I managed to come across more than my fair share of social anomalies the other day. By social anomalies I mean, and not wishing to be overtly rude, people who were, shall we say, in varying degrees, a few fluid ounces short of a full pint. Now each to their own and all that. It takes all sorts to weave this rich tapestry that we call life, but people please, let’s employ a modicum of common sense.

Firstly I saw a young lady who was clearly no stranger to the inside of Greggs. Now there’s nothing wrong with that per se, big can be beautiful, but I think I missed the Paris Fashion Week where cerise leggings matched with an egg stained hoodie became à la mode. So her fashion sense was not what you would call first rate, unfortunately her common sense matched her fashion sense. She nonchalantly sparked up a cigarette oblivious to the sign on the wall behind her that said; “SMOKE FREE ZONE”. Admittedly she may not have seen it, but it was purple and the size of the aforementioned pasty shop.

Luckily, she had a gallant and noble boyfriend who seeing that she was cold offered her his coat. Such a beautiful moment, marred slightly by the vision of him, now shivering in a vest, tracky bottoms and a baseball cap. Ah, young love.

All the time this was going on we were being entertained by a woman with a mobile phone stuck to her ear wandering up and down ranting away. I suppose it was entertaining whilst waiting for the bus, but we only heard half the conversation as she paraded up and down, beguiling us with half a story delivered by the Doppler Effect.

Now during my meander home I have to cross the railway tracks and it seems that my walk home is synchronised with passing trains as I always end up on the wrong side of the descending barriers. However, the flashing lights and wailing klaxon was not going to prevent the next Darwin Award nominee from getting across the railway line. This young gene pool degenerate was walking in front of me when the amber warning lights went off, he clearly had made his mind up to go for it and run the gauntlet of flashing lights, sirens, gates and trains, even though Usain Bolt with a tailwind would not have got there before the barriers started to fall. It was the look of surprise on his face as he was almost permanently silenced via the medium of decapitation by the descending barriers that tickled me. However, he swerved neatly to avoid the barriers and ran through just about unscathed. If the trains ever run on time he might not be so lucky.

Some of these social anomalies have mastered the art of cycling. However, as was evident from the specimen that rode towards the level crossing, it’s really hard to cycle, send a text and avoid parked cars all at the same time. It was a wonder he didn’t fall off, as he somehow swerved around the cars, put in his phone in his pocket and used the now descended level crossing gates to bring himself to an abrupt stop. I almost applauded, if it wasn’t for the fact that he completed his cycling acrobatics with a manual evacuation of his left nostril, by applying a finger to his right one and blowing hard. Two words; dirty and bastard.

I know I sound like an old snob, but these are the people who will be taking over this planet.

God help us.

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day in the UK. An annual celebration of our Mother's and their place in our hearts. All very lovely, commendable and nice.

To me Mother's Day is all about handmade cards and daffodils, these seem to symbolise what Mother's Day was like for me. Pasta shapes stuck to a card with copious amounts of PVA glue and covered in glitter. Bunches of daffodils from the local florist or picked from the garden, or picked from someone else's garden if you came from a poor background like me. 

But how things have changed.

Now it seems to be that social networking has stolen the innocence of Mother's Day away. It now seems like there is a strong desire for people to rush to Facebook and extol the virtues of their mothers on there. Again, this can be viewed as lovely, commendable and nice, if you are posting on your mother's wall and she is actually on Facebook to reply.

My mother has no concept of Facebook, my mother had no concept of Facebook when she was alive! So I have no desire to run to the social networking sites and literally shout "Happy Mother's Day!" to my long dead mother who has no internet connection or WiFi enabled headstone!

But people do this and I for one cannot fully understand it. That may seem harsh, but I think it says more about the person posting the comments, than it does about the dead relative. To me it says; "look at me, how righteous am I? I'm remembering my dead relative by posting a status on Facebook".

I guess we have been doing this kind of thing for years, by posting a memorial tribute in the local paper, but even that I feel is a tad morbid, for me the connection between myself and my mother, especially on days like today is purely spiritual. There's no physical entity left, so to have a physical conversation, via whatever medium; Facebook, newspaper etc. is meaningless. I would say you really only need to have thoughts of remembrance and send those thoughts into the nothingness of space and so if there is any spiritual ethernet, those thoughts will travel to your dearly departed and the job is done. There's no requirement to broadcast your message to everyone on your timeline. Instead keep those messages special, meaningful and targeted via thoughts alone.

Does my opinion make me a bad person? I hope not. I fully understand the need to grieve the loss of your parents, I have lost both of mine and I still miss them, but I don't run to the hills with a billboard shouting it, or post great swathes of sadness on Facebook or wherever. I send them my best wishes by thought alone. Surely that's enough?

These are just my thoughts. Feel free to have yours.