I met a boy on the London tube
And then it got really weird.
“Watch out girls, watch out."
These were the cockney-accented words authoritatively grumbled by the man of the hour, Spud. It was a Saturday night, and his tape measure was erect and stretched across the feet of seven women’s feet on a Piccadilly tube. I was one of the blessed seven.
And thank god, because up until Spud and his mates/coworkers, “Lemsip” and “Frankie”, boarded the train, I’d wondered: where have all the cowboys gone? Where go my men lacking awareness of personal space? I guess the universe heard my silent lamentations and gifted me. Or maybe it wasn’t the universe at all, but the bus stop witch from last week.
Okay, I lie. The truth is that those mustachioed train cowboys in fluoro safety garb clutching manly cans of drink and tool boxes were all women. They were cowwomen.
Weirder still, I was sent a video of myself laughing at them the following night by a runner named Freddie with whom I’d just spent the summer working. How? What? How? Stranger than weird, it was, until Freddie made the connection for me.
I’d posted a story of Spud taking measurements on the tube to my Instagram, which Freddie saw. Presumably, he then saw either Frankie or Lemsip’s POV online, in which I can be seen recording and giggling. As it turns out, the real identity of either Frankie or Lemsip is someone named Molly.
Odder still, Molly was my replacement when I took a week’s holiday in September during a film job in Devon. We’d never met. And for official purposes - we still haven’t met. I know only Lemsip or Frankie (I suspect the latter to be Molly) and, with the pleasure of thousand chuckles, Spud.
There’s probably something profound to be said of unlikely coincidences and sliding doors and that genre of thing, but I’m going to leave it with Paula Cole.
Paula, I hope I’ve answered your question in some way today.