no hoWARd

The central train station had a big fire yesterday morning that resulted in us being kicked out a station early and all being late to our respective destinations.

Subsequently, I took the tram home last night, after another marathon essay marking session at uni.

A bloke got on and sat down opposite me, conveniently burying his head in a book, allowing me to stare at him properly for the bulk of the trip (yes, I am the annoying person that does that :-)

He was middle aged, with a colossal multicoloured goatee (if you can call it that - maybe a narrow beard would be a better description) and beautiful plastic multicoloured rings in his ears and nose (I assume they were UV reflective or something), with a large lumberjack type jacket (with a 'save the...' something or another patch on the back), accessorised by a series of badges/pins.

The first badge, inevitably, had a cross through the word homophobia, the second had 'no hoWARd' on it (very clever use of capitalisation for seditious effect) and I can't remember the other one. To top it all off, there was a gorgeous large red woman's handbag with a stylised stick person throwing a nazi swastika into a rubbish bin (culture jamming all the way baby!).

The problem was, that for all this, I could only sit there thinking how much he looked - sans goatee - like a middle aged banker. I guess some people are suited to the non-conformist look and some aren't, which probably implies something about my perspective on conformation in the first place.

Al KeyDa train.

Pulling away from my local station this morning heading towards the city. Everyone in the carriage looks up as this bloke of indeterminate arab origin (almost definitely a terrorist ;-) runs up to the door that has just closed, punches it angrily and then uses some sharp metal object or another to scour the side of the carriage as it passes, making an incredible noise.

Now i've heard of people 'keying' cars, but train carriages? That's taking it to a whole new level!