Nancy

Chapter - For The Love Of Nancy

I feel bewitched by Nancy. Everywhere I look, there she is. Nancy. She's on the front page of the Mail. She's got a double page spread in The Sun. Nancy. I feel bewitched. Feverishly I check the other papers. Nancy Nancy Nancy. She's everywhere and nowhere. Nancy. An enigma. She says nothing. She does nothing. But still she's there. The front page of the Daily Mail. There's a huge banner headline, across the width of thyme page just under the logo and more prominent than the lead story that says "Nancy: So what's she trying to tell Sven now?" and a huge picture, the length of the page, of this woman in a green-gold ballgown. Nancy. I don't suppose it's any madder than any thing else in the papers but it does make you think "Did I turn right when everyone else turned left?" The Mail is one of the biggest selling newspapers in the land. The editors must have a fair idea of what it is that their people want and I wouldn't back my judgement against theirs. Obviously putting this Nancy on the front page is a smart thing to do. Obviously people care about Nancy. But why? Why on earth should anyone care about this woman who, as far as I know, has never uttered a word about anything to anyone. Leaving aside the question of just how it is that the girlfriend of the manager of the England football team has reached that rarified level of fame where only a first name will do... No - how did that happen? She's the girlfriend of the manager of the England football team - an unsuccessful manager of an unsuccessful England football team at that.

Never mind. We've just passed a place that sells "garage doors as individual as you are". It takes a while to get that one into my head. "Garage doors as individual as you are". as an idea. it's a bit HR Puff'n'stuff What do you suppose it looks like, this garage door that's as individual as you are? Mine would, I hope, look interesting if a bit frayed round the edges. Black, yes, black with an ornate silver handle and would open about an hour or so after it was supposed to.


It's like your first pill. That feeling of how could anything be this good? That idea that, this is it. I'm never going to stop doing this, that would be stupid. When you can feel this good why would you choose not to be? Come here, no come here, really I've got to tell you something nah, nah it's really important and... You know?

I've just noticed that this is a 'Quiet Coach' - no laptops, it says. No one says anything to me about my laptop so I figure I'm just going to carry on typing. Well, I don't know - in fairness they might have said something and the chances are I wouldn't have heard anything. Well, not with The Streets' Original Pirate Material playing at force nine through my Jog Proof with G-Protection CD Walkman. No idea what G-Protection is, but it is definitely Jog Proof. But then again, most things in my life are jog proof. 'No personal stereos' it says just under the bit where it says 'No laptops'. And I'm sitting here with a personal stereo playing while tapping into my laptop. There are now quite a few people looking at me. Maybe the G on the Jog Proof CD Walkman stands for 'gaze'. Or 'glare'. "Customer demand has led us to introduce this quiet coach" it says next to a line of symbols like you get on a dry clean only jacket. No this, no that. Why is it that, at the age of 44 - which, by most reckonings, has to be after we've swapped ends at half-time - I'm gripped by a desire to light up a fag? 'No smoking in this vehicle'. Obviously. I hadn't thought about it before - to be honest if anything I'd thought I was doing quite well in my latest effort at kicking the habit, a habit which by common consensus is harder to kick than just about any drug you care to name. I hadn't had a fag since the last time it was dark which, come to think of it, it was again now.