I wouldn't mind, but ....

I wouldn't mind, but ..... when Northerners are on the London tube why do they always want a conversation?  There was one next to me today.  Chirpy as the magpie that poops on my windowsill every morning.  I swear that bird is the reincarnation of Le Petomane, the French Flatulist. 

Anyway, back to Chirpy.  Sat there, legs astride, as if to say, "I've paid for my ticket and I'm gonna own this carriage" and wearing diamond-encrusted jeans (he was over 40 and the rocks weren't real).  Opposite him was his son - I know this because in the 20 minutes it took to get from Oxford Circus to Walthamstow Central, I became familiar with his family lineage back to William the Conquerer.  The son was 14 and holding a long, thin case, which held securely a snooker cue. This was an instrument of great excitement to the child.  Clearly a tourist from Sheffield as I think they all carry one now, having become the home of televised snooker. 

Anyway, I took all this in during the five seconds I had my eyes open, assessed boredom on the horizon, and hastily closed them.  I feigned a couple of yawns as well, just to emphasise that I was a typical Londoner and well versed in the unfriendly, stoic ways of tube travel.  Undeterred, the child kept asking if anyone would adopt him. It became evident very soon that my total withdrawal from any interest in adopting him, made me the very person he wanted to be adopted by.  My eyes remained closed.  But, in the same way we try to ignore a fly fizzing round the living room, I eventually had to give in and swatted him with an abrupt opening of the eyes and a look so condescending, a more socially, city-centric youth would have immediately withdrawn into the hip hop on his ipod.  Alas, not Chirpy or Snooker Boy.  The latter asked me directly if I'd like to adopt him.  "No", was my answer.  "Why Not?"  I resisted the urge to say "because I couldn't afford the mushy peas", and instead said "Because I think you'd get on my nerves".  While he was digesting this rejection, I added: "But maybe in a couple of years we could have an affair".  Chirpy worried that this might be child abuse, but I reassured him that Snooker Boy would probably be considered a late starter where I came from.  Sadly, Walthamstow Central arrived and I didn't get Snooker Boy's address, so I currently have an affair scheduled for 2013 somewhere in Sheffield.