Blue Dress Hot Mess

Mini-Series: The Tube Observer

The 10.23:

Someone opens a can of coke. It pops, fizzes, goes silent, lies flat. All the energy of a toddler, squashed by a parent’s stern eye. ADHD bubbles. Someone’s grandad was having an affair with his friend’s mum – it-wasn’t-like-a-secret-but-it-was-like-a-secret that it was with her. There’s a laugh behind the voice which makes it thick, like a frog caught in his throat. He’s thirty-something, trying to be a grown up. You have to disconnect yourself or just walk through the door and commit to knowing (good line, I think. This must be a thirty-something with a certain amount of self-awareness). Grandad was definitely naughty. A working class lad from Southend. 

The lady next to me has a Labrador on her Lock Screen. He is black, large, and has a lolling pink tongue which looks like it might lick me through the phone. He is wearing silver and red tinsel around his ears and collar, and he sits in front of a Christmas tree. I wonder if she ever changes her Lock Screen – we are rolling towards summer, after all, closer, closer, with every turn of the train’s wheels. Perhaps the hug of Christmas, the promise of the lolling pink tongue, the scratch of the tinsel and the gentle glittering lights are a year-long memory, a dream, a wish, a hope. They are the warmest embrace the month of May has offered me yet; like morning sunshine through closed eyelids. Peace on earth, goodwill to men. We’d do well to remember that more often. 

My business woman – not mine, at all, but I have claimed her, like a dropped penny in the street (“A penny for your thoughts, good Madam?”) – sits with her legs apart. The Power Pose. I admire it. She is cool – blonde bob. We caught eyes as I assessed her, so I look back to my phone, embarrassed. She yawned, uninterested in me. I don’t blame her. Her nails are bitten. We synchronised-yawn. Two women, one mind. 

London:

I nearly got run over on Curtain Road. That would be curtains. (Teehee. I make myself giggle, and look demented doing so. Teehee even more, in Islington). 

I saw her in Starbucks. I had emerged from Old Street tube station, bleary eyed and blinking away nerves. She was sitting in the window, right leg thrown over left, the epitome of calm-business-woman-chic. I felt 21 (too young). I didn’t think, just slammed on my brakes and reversed around the corner to recover my poise. When I stopped and dropped my bag on the pavement, I wondered how I’d got there. I should have just gone in. I was meeting her for careers help — for a coming-together of female writers — to sit in on her podcast? I suddenly wasn’t sure, and had a fleeting feeling of being an impostor on her 2:30pm cup of herbal tea (Starbucks plastic mug, Tall. The tea bag string hung over the edge. She left it to infuse). We both wore blazers. (Two women, one mind). She wore high heels, I wore trainers. (Two women, different generations). We hugged hello. (Two women, awkwardness adverted, generation-gap bridged by embrace). I had taken my deep breaths, had a peruse of the Superdrug shelves during which I saw nothing at all, not even tanning moisturisers or hair oils (I was a little early, after all, so it was only right of me to hang back a little before disturbing her). I walked into Starbucks, tapped her boldly on the shoulder. “Hello, Elizabeth? I’m Cressy. Cressida”. What is my name?

I liked her line: “let’s carry on this chat away from the mics and in front of a vodka martini”. If we are two women, this one is definitely a kindred spirit (potato-based; though I prefer gin). 

Later: the Tube:

I am lost on the tube and I spent too much money in Anthropologie. What happened to only buying second hand? I try, but caps don’t count (incidentally, neither does underwear) and the trousers were too good to miss. I will see it as my “summer shop”, and will forgo new socks to make up for it. The fact that I actually need new socks (and a new bra – but, Christ!, since when was a bra £50!), and needed neither a green cap which says “Matcha Life” on it nor new white trousers with croissants on them, is completely by the by. I will have to spend my summer sock-less (easy!), and can substitute my bra for a bikini. I will wear nothing but a green cap and croissant trousers. Maybe I need a new top too. I’ll call it Treat Yourself Tuesday. It has been a tough day, after all. My first foray into the corporate working world since – well, since last summer. Behind the scenes on a podcast set is exhausting; everyone else around you is so busy, the talent, the glam, the PR manager, the podcast host, the producer, the videographer, and little me all crammed into a cellular dark room with show posters on the walls and a thick black leather sofa into which I try to sink into insignificance, but really just lounge like I own the place and look down my long nose at Australian TV stars. Liverpool Street on a weekday evening is busy and confusing and I am lost. I am not the only one who is lost; in fact, in their small ways, I think everyone is. Most people look up to the heavens as though God will send them an answer. Eastbound or westbound? Please, God, show me the way! (Really they are looking at the signs which flicker unhelpfully with Train Approaching, 3 min in luminescent orange. Which train? Where? God knows. Does He?). 

A couple get on at Embankment. She smiles apologetically at me as she grabs my hand instead of the rail when the train jerks off (not in that way). I glance at him; his hand is on the roof-rail. His middle finger nail is painted pink. I glance at her hands, now both wrapped tightly around the central pole, holding her steady. She looks as though she’s steering a ship. All 10 of her finger nails are painted pink. They are American. Cute: matching nails. We’ve all been there. 

The sleek business man behind them is watching Polo on his phone. I stifle a laugh of disbelief. I have never seen anyone watch the Polo on catch-up, least of all on a busy commuter train on a Tuesday night going round and round the underground of London in endless, snail-hare-snail circles. He wears a blue wool sweater and blue suede shoes (Elvis is singing in Heaven). His glasses have wire stems and are rimless, which makes me want to call them “spectacles”. He has a black rucksack on his back, and is studying the Polo intensely. A family gets on. Buggy, baby, three children. Their scooter handle catches on my shopping bag, dragging me away from my pole and down the train. I disengage myself. Don’t you steal all my very expensive shopping; I couldn’t survive this summer without my cap and trousers. I’d be literally naked. 

My sister has homemade garlic bread and my uncle has an orange flavoured cocktail. My father has white wine. I will sleep on the sofa, which is turquoise and the exact length of my body, so that I slot in perfectly if I curl my toes. The flat smells like garlic; it’s lucky I miss France. 

07/05/25:

It is a blue-mascara—curly-hair—pink-scarf day. Lemon drops and coffee stains. The first man I saw walking down the street was some kind of Heaven-sent Adonis. How can my day fail when such beauty prowls the 10am streets of Westminster?