Watching the World Go By

You know when you see cartoon characters with steam coming out of their ears - I know exactly how they feel! Robbie and I were going to the garage to check the tyres and to do all those routine car jobs last night, so I arranged to drop Laura at work and then pick Robbie up from the station. Shortly before I was due to leave the house he rang to say that the line was blocked because a train had failed. He said not to worry because he would only be 35 minutes late. I had to leave as planned in order to get Laura to work on time, so I found myself sitting in the station car park watching the world go by. Whoever it was that coined the phrase 'the sights you see when you haven't got your gun' was probably sitting in the car park at Northampton when that thought struck them. There was enough raw material to keep Trinny and Susannah fully occupied for years! I began to wonder if there is a national shortage of mirrors? Why do men wear brown shoes with black suits? it looks horrible. I saw a so many people with pinstriped suits, striped shirts and patterned ties, have they never heard that 'less is more' or are they just taking revenge on the world? How difficult is it to buy a pair of trousers that actually fits? There seems to be an epidemic of 'ankle bashers' surely people must notice that their trousers are at half mast, it makes them look as if they have escaped from an institution. I know old men have a tendency to pull their trousers up to fasten under their chin, but ankle basher syndrome seems to affect a wide variety of people.

I watched groups of passengers spilling out onto the station, looking hopefully for Robbie among the crowd. He wasn't there. A series of texts detailed his very slow progress, each text ended with the word 'farce' in capital letters. I think it's a man thing, he does something similar when he is loosing an argument, he underlines every statement with the word 'fact'. By the time he finally arrived it was too late to mess around with the car, we had to get home in time to rescue the chicken casserole. Robbie wanted to talk about every detail of his journey and to explain the exact cause of the delay. I wanted to think about anything other than trains, surely I had endured enough for one night, he didn't take the hint and in the end he was faced with a stark choice - shut up about trains or walk home!

Robbie seems to have taken on some 'Hulk' like tendencies. On Monday he tore his shirt on the arm near the elbow, yesterday he tore a second shirt in exactly the same place. I suggested that he should wear that horrible multi coloured striped shirt today, I wouldn't be too bothered if he ripped that one. I suspect this may be a cunning plan to justify more new shirts, but I think he still has more than enough shirts to see him through the next few months!