w.atching the w.orld unw.ind

Today's lyric:

"Me hat is frozen to me head
Me body is loike a lump o' lead
Me shoes are frozen to me feet
From standen at yer windoe."

Planxty: "Cold blow and the rainy night"
From the album: " Cold blow and the rainy night "

Kee-riste, but it's sharp out there today!

Now, where was I? Ah, yes.

Where my mate works (blummin' heck - two posts in quick succession!!) they have a pigeon problem. Their crap is destroying the lovely brickwork of the museum where he 'works'.

So ten years ago (yes, Matey, it is that long) he liberated my BSA .22 Superstar air rifle (can't provide a link as works' filters prohibit me accessing sites offerring weapons of mass destruction) and wanders around culling occasionally.

It's a lovely model - and with a 'scope mounted, damnedly accurate.

If there are three roosting together, he'll just 'take out' the middle one. He reckons the two left outside look at each other, as if to say "Didn't see him take off?" The carcasses are re-cycled via the local fox population, so everyone profs. Well, obviously not the pigeons..

Now, anyone who knows me will admit that I am, if nothing else, quite gregarious. But I made a secret resolution from the outset not to strike up relationships - even nodding ones - with my fellow commuters. Only because I wouldn't want to offend them by appearing to 'blank' them on those days where I'm happy just to hide behind a book (which reminds me - must remember to change my "Reading" link, over there on the right) and my minidisk's earphones. Not antisocial, just 'private'?

So when some of the regulars disappear, I've no inkling whatsoever of what's become of them.

One, who never failed to toss his head in disgust whenever an old slam-door turned up instead of the new sliders, hasn't been on the platform for weeks. Another, who always used the same service as me - in and out of town - and who paced just behind or just ahead of me on the walk back home, veering off after 90% of my trek to go to his own cave, hasn't been seen for months?

Maybe they've got lucky? Been promoted, or moved to another job? Won the Lotto? Emigrated?

Or maybe they've been made redundant? Got some terrible illness? Killed in a car crash?

Either way, I'm unlikely to ever know. Hours and hours in each other's 'company' without a word exchanged. Potentially great friends who will never be.

Maybe I am a bit anti-social?