Welcome to Smith's House of Pestilence, May I Take Your Order?

Wherein Our Heroine Gives You Filler - it's Good for You.

John is home today, poor man - after several days of fighting the ick, he has decided it is the better part of valor to stay away from work until the ick passes. Mac has spent the morning in spastic, defensive glee, noisily repelling all intruders, real and imaginary (actually, only the imaginary kind). "BARK!" he says. "Bark, BARK, BARK!!" [Translation: "Take that, imaginary intruders! Someone is trying to sleep in this house, and I won't let you get in to disturb him!]

So, I am giving you an old story, mostly because it's easy to do - I can do this and return to it after I drag the dog away from the front windows for the 36th time. Concentration not necessary.

Several years ago, I spent about nine days in London. I got a Tube Pass, which requires you to get a little ID card to go with the Pass, just in case you are stopped by the Tube Police. I think Tube Passes are one of the reasons why London is simply littered with photo-booths. Certainly you can find a photo-booth in just about any Tube Station. Anyway, the photo-booths had gone all digital since I had last entered one (in 1990 - oy. I am old). It used to be, you got in, you paid your money, you looked like a dork for approximately 30 seconds, you got four photos of said dorkishness for your Pound Sterling.

Now, you go in, you sit, it takes a digiphoto, you check it out, assess whether or not it's good enough to make four of and go on with the process. (They used to take four different shots. Now they only give you four copies of the one shot - it must be hell for those kids who made collages of themselves and their friends all making dorky idiots of themselves in four different ways per trip to the photo booth). Then, a teddibly, teddibly uppah-claaahhs English woman's voice says, "When you are happy, press the green button."

I found myself wondering, "Happy? What does happy have to do with it? If I'm feeling slightly blue or mildly irritated, do I have to sit here until I eventually get happy? What do the clinically depressed do? Never get a photo? Are they forced to get daily return fares whenever they take the Tube? What is the matter with this country?"

I suppose it is appropriate that my Tube pass ID bears a photo of me smirking.

Posted: Wednesday - September 01, 2004 at 08:09 AM | |