SOCIAL ANXIETY PART ONE

Sometimes there is a disproportionate amount of men in the cafe where I asked for a flick knife. Most of them are playing cards or watching the football and they leave me alone but from time to time one of them starts saying stuff to me. The day after the flick knife episode I did something out of character. In an attempt to assimilate and get over an occasional social anxiety I reached over the counter in a really pushy, selfish way towards what looked like a delicious sponge cake and the man next to me started to get a bit miffed and asked me if I would like him to move as it was clear I had no regard for him. I told him the Spanish equivalent of 'no, you're alright mate', and then he started to interrogate me using verbs and nouns that were a bit too colloquial for my liking so I had no idea what he was going on about. Don't ask me why but I said the first thing to get rid of him and answered, 'not until nine o'clock', to whatever he was enquiring about and left, sponge cake in hand, leaving him scratching his head. I'm wondering what it was he asked. Maybe it was whether I am legally resident here and do I have all my papers in order or whether I was going to give him a bite of that cake or else. I will never be able to go there again.

Mack the Knife

I sometimes wonder what I am on. When you have a snack or a cake in Spain you are always offered cutlery and a napkin. The waitress in my cafe asked me if I would like said utensils and forgetting the word at that moment I said, 'oh, a flick-knife will do'.

So much has happened recently that I was too busy living it to comment but one thing I thought I'd share was over the Christmas period I found myself in Liberty's in Regent Street and at one point I thought we would never get out as I felt I was being sucked into some sort of neurological experiment that only occurs when I enter big cities. Mr van de Ven announced he needed the loo and off he went leaving me to entertain myself with men's silk dressing gowns in the style of William Morris. He was gone awhile and I felt an awful existential angst that something might have happened to him once fifteen minutes had passed. That English side of me didn't want anyone to know I might be perturbed so pretended I was interested in the old photos and history of Liberty's that adorn the walls outside said lavs. I comforted myself while looking at them that things used to be, well, what exactly? I don't know, somewhat neater, ordered. It didn't take me long to admit that things were probably much shittier than now but anyway. While waiting outside the loos grumpy fathers with their kids and faces like thunder were heard muttering on passing, 'this is why there should be MEN's and WOMEN'S loos'. Then an American man, quite tall but someone who, despite his height, you might feel you could mess with,  came out with his young kid and told his wife that said kid was OK now but some 'guy' in the loo was berating him that the kid had a digestive problem and on seeing him spending twenty minutes in the loo said, and I quote ,' I know you Americans have a shit diet but you should in fact take the kid to A and E and he ought to be given an enema', or words to that effect. As soon as I heard these words I just knew who said them and obviously hung around to hear what was coming next. The supposed wife then exploded and asked, ' and what did YOU say??', to which the supposed husband grew a few inches and said, ' well I TOLD HIM our son was only seven!'. The wife then asked what the 'guy' said and the husband said confidently , 'well of course he just shrank and shut up!' I tried to stifle a laugh but at the same time felt a frisson as I knew that it was Mr van de Ven and that there was no way he would have shrank in such a situation and if anything would have preferred a massive punch up. Just then yer man exits stage left and says to me ' Jesus, twenty minutes to have a slash, THAT kid needs an enema!'