The name of this post is inspired by two incidents that recently happened to that little lamb who just cannot stay out of the headlights… it’s the return of the Black Sheep of the Northern Line!
- I finally found out what Fiddler on the Roof is
- I became a Kindle man
Not a great deal to say on the first, it’s one of several catchy phrases that have sporadically invited themselves into my head since my mid-teens. Only this time I remembered to google it before the fiddler laid down his fiddle and the monkey banging symbols returned from his break. That should have been a clue because I was delighted to discover it’s a turn of the 20th century musical I have no intention of watching. More interestingly, it’s the only one of those phrases that hasn’t turned out to be an ABBA lyric.
To the second. I lessthanthree reading, but in a moment of weakness last year I took a sip of what I thought was a harmless mocktail, but which turned out to be the blackout-inducing cocktail of Storage Hunters UK on the sofa, YouTube Shorts in bed, and buying things I don’t need from Amazon on the toilet. My thirst has now fully siphoned off my downtime and left the eerily quiet library shuttles that tiptoe up and down the Northern Line as the only place left to indulge my lessthanthree for the written word.
To complete this perfect storm, I’ve been getting into work later than I used to which means I can never get a seat, and nor can I get one on the tube in. Reading standing is doable, but with only one free hand it restricts you to paperbacks <3zerozero pages and assumes you have space to lift that hand, with your opening statement when you arrive at the office being only ‘cor was sardines on the tube this morning‘ and not the dreaded ‘cor was sardines on the tube this morning mate‘.
There was a technological solution but it came with a complexity – I’ve been an anti-Kindle hardliner since 2016. I never knew why, but by re-examining the issue under the guidance of my iPad wielding therapist (conflict of interest?) I have been able to pinpoint the reason.
I was working in Germany for a good chunk of 2016 and with a long commute and no baggage space for books I decided to get a kindle. Being a year out of uni I stinged around and borrowed my mum’s instead of buying my own.
Chimes and gongs emanating from the iPad allowed me to unlock a suppressed memory of reading on a train from the client’s office to Berlin on the morning after the result of the Brexit referendum was announced. That already made me more sheepish than usual, but then I realised I was getting dirty look after dirty look from the people getting on and off the seats opposite me. I wondered how they knew, I hadn’t yet charmed them with my Mockney accent and I’m far from a British bulldog by appearance…
Towards the end of my journey I caught a new passenger’s polite smile glance down at my Kindle and then, like a European arriving at Calais and gazing across at Dover, immediately contort into that of a person chewing a wasp. It was then I remembered my mum’s Kindle cover was delicately embroidered with a frilly, flowery, yet unmistakable Union Jack.
Still reeling from this trauma a decade on, I muddled along for a few months but when I became a Londoner who no longer tutted at people not taking their bags off on busy tubes I knew it was time for change.
In my defence, a rucksack busily backed up into your midriff provides the perfect platform to rest your book on and allows your non-clinging hand the luxury of cocking the next page when you’re still two sentences from the end of your current one.
Nevertheless, I went back somewhere and came up nowhere with the below solutions:
- Get into work earlier
- Stop watching people bid for storage units
- Get a Kindle
I cannily decided to explore them in reverse order.
Reasons to douse the kindling:
- Other passengers don’t know what you’re reading.
Without a Kindle, people would continue to be impressed seeing me read highbrow classics such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. - It’s impossible to read a thousand page hardback about former US President Ulysses S. Grant* without a seat.
Without a Kindle, I could read something I might actually enjoy.
Reasons to light the kindling:
- Other passengers don’t know what you’re reading.
With a Kindle, I could read Twilight. - It’s impossible to read a thousand page hardback about former US President Ulysses S. Grant* without a seat.
With a Kindle, I could.
*He was the Union army’s top boy during the Civil War and then elected gaffer during Reconstruction.
Conclusion: The detail in that asterisk tells you the answer.