The power of the human mind

I went to see the Arcade Fire in Brixton on Saturday, with Des, Mel and Martin. Before the gig though I met up with Des and Mel in Islington for a pizza. As I walked down Upper Street I mused on how amazing the human mind is. How does it not get overwhelmed with all the information hitting it all the time? It is an incredible organ…. I paused for a second to take things in. Stuff we would normally filter out in our day to day.

Church Bells Ringing, Sirens Blaring, The lights of a police van burning into your retinas, the stink of a kebab, a wailing child. What if we lived a life when we couldn't filter anything out? We'd never achieve anything! We'd crumple to the floor in sensory overload gibbering like a stoat injected with red bull whilst clasping our hands over our ears and scrunching our eyes from the multitudes of colour attacking us from every direction.

So had a nice meal, then got on a packed tube to head off to Brixton. And that's when I got the converse effect of the power of the human mind. The times when you can't filter out something intensely irritating. A stupid 30 something couple in lust with each other (30+ people publicly showing affection is frankly disgusting) got on and stood nano-metres in front of me touching each other and sticking tongues in each others facial orifices. Get a room! They had invaded my aura with their irritating fumbling. And much as I tried to shut them out, they were too close for comfort. If I looked down and away, then my ears would pick up (above the noise of the tube train – bastard ears!) the slurpy licky sounds of tongue's popping in and out of ears and the scrape as her taste buds rasped against his shag pile like nasal hair.

If I looked up, my peripheral vision would see Gollum like fiddly hands worming their way around their partners fulsome carcass and horrid wet tentacular tongues writhing like entangled pulsating termite queens.

And their shitty perfume / aftershave combo was particularly gruesome. I had some options to get my own back –

1) Hug them and start licking their faces.

2) Have an Arthur Fowler like nervous breakdown and garrotte them with the strap of my man bag.

3) Avoid touching them and irritate them in a not so subtle way.

The first two options may have got me arrested, so I went for option 3. First, I smiled smugly as I picked my nose, sticking my little finger right up my hooter and pushing the skin out like a proboscis. All I needed was one glance, but it hurt like hell. And yes! Success, the man of the couple of looked at me… his tongue rolled back into his skull as his eyes bulged in horror. They didn't stop though. He shut his eyes, so I needed to crush their senses via another route. I wiped my snot sodden pinky and cleared my throat, a proper old mans green grolly invoking growl from the back of my throat. They both stopped this time, and looked at me. I had won.

Luckily I didn't even have to guff. That was my last defence, like a squid in danger squirting black ink, I would have unleashed hell upon their nostrils. But there would have been civilian casualties….

Thankfully, they got off the train, everyone was safe. I sincerely hope that they could see my distended nose and hear my throat gurgling greenie cough all through the night. FUCK OFF! DON'T MESS WITH ME!

Ps - Arcade fire were great. Awesome live.