THURSDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2014
Keys on the keyboard don’t hit themselves. The mouse clicks, but only when I press one of two fingers down on its flanks. Words clot on paper, but get stuck when I’m talking to myself out loud … which, to be precise, is only half a truth, because words also get stuck in my throat or hide behind my teeth when I want to explain something to someone, or when I want to bore them with an anecdote about the European middle ages, or with one of my famed opinions.
Not that I’m implying I know so much about the European middle ages that I can entertain just about anyone on a street corner or on the subway with stories about it, but I have read a few articles on Wikipedia, watched a few documentaries, and, as a matter of fact, read a number of books on the subject.
This can, in theory, make one appear smarter to other people, but it definitely doesn’t make you a better banana chooser. I mean, three of my last three bananas had bruises! Were these bruises already present under their golden skin in the supermarket, or did I crush the fruit when I put my half-litre cup of green tea on top of them in the basket mounted in the front of my bicycle?
That very same half-litre cup of green tea arrived leaking beverage onto the road by the time I made it to the hauntingly deserted area where I’ve turned two empty rooms in an old house into my “office”. When I took the bag with the tea and the golden yellow bananas from the basket, tea spilt all over my shoes and my trousers. “What the …?!” I wanted to scream. Then I realised the bag was leaking. Did the cup break? Did the woman at the tea shop not close the lid properly? After the bag had dripped tea on my shoes and my neat trousers for approximately twelve seconds while obscenities flowed unarrested from my mouth, I ran into the street, took the cup out of the bag, and threw the tea in the bag in the drain.
Crisis averted.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the European middle ages or anything in which anyone, myself included, is even remotely interested.
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