Number of times...

Well what a crazy-weird week on my newspaper stand up the city. Here are the highlights and the stats:

• Number of times I mention I’m from Chicago and get ‘Oh the windy city’ in response: 5
  
• Number of times the people knew Chicago is not in fact windy but the saying is a reference to the politics of late 19th century Chicago: 0
  
• Number of New Zealanders served: 1
  
• Number of people looking for John Lewis: 7
  
• Number of people looking for the market: 4
  
• Number of people looking for Coleman’s Mustard Shop: 3
  
• Number of people looking for the street we were standing on: 2
  
• Number the of the bus the grumpy bus driver drives: 21
  
• Number of times Stewart sang along to Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall: 2
  
• Number of times a man known only as Mr.Shoes picks up a free paper: 3
  
• Number of times I was asked if I could roll a cigarette: 1
  
• Number of times people asked me to feel the temperate of their hands: 2
  
• Number of times people made visual and vocal responses to seeing prince Charles’s news: 14
  
• Number of times people felt they had to talk to me extensively about it and then not buy a paper: 4
  
• Number of times people read the headline then yelled “Crickey! What?”: 1
  
• Number of times I had no idea what people where saying to me: countless
  

The highlight of Pancake Day was the fact that free with the Evening news you got a free Jif lemon. Here are some of the stats from the fine day:

• Number of old ladies who told me they are just buying the paper for the free lemon: 6
  
• Number of old ladies that told me lemons help with deep vain thrombosis: 1
  
• Number of people really surprisingly excited by the prospect of a free lemon: countless
  
• Number of people who didn’t want a lemon: 1
  
• Number of strange old ladies with beards that stole a lemon: 2 (Yes it happened twice)

I am convinced that it is in fact the high-vis jacket that makes all the difference in how the world perceives me. My examples follow like this: 1. I am invisible to anyone I am normally visible to. Nice looking upstanding normal males of my age can not see me, they look, but not with the normal intensity I’m used to, for they in fact see through me. Which for something that is supposed to be high ‘visibility’ is a pretty good trick.

2. The Debenham’s girl. I use the toilet in the department store Debenham’s, there is a girl who works there that seems offend by this. She is chav. (That means British white trash – would that make it Anglo rubbish?) She makes poor choices in where to pierce her body. She looks down her nose at me. I find this extremely funny, and always make a point of walking through her department as if I am the queen of Sheba.

3. Breast Boy. He can’t be more then 17 and he’s at least a D cup, I mean the boy’s got a pair of tits and they aren’t blue and feathered. On Tuesday he did that great ‘crazy’ person thing of unnecessary amount of eye contact – just enough to creep you out. But later that day when dressed normally I was completely invisible to him. It is as if the high vis jacket only makes you highly visible to the lost, racist, and mentally unstable. Sure enough the next day he talked to me again like I was his best friend, which I probably am.

News on Butch, she doesn’t work for the Evening news, she just wears the jacket. Yes she is like some sort of News groupie; wants to hang out on street corners and wear bright yellow coats, but just not cool enough. I guess she works for Norwich Union and just likes to wear her fiancé’s coat (for all the high fashion that it is I’m sure.) I can understand really, I mean just the other day Tom (works for Norwich Union and looks like King Charles the first – Tom) was saying he would love my job.

Other news, an ‘it’s a small world’ situation arose; I was talking to a guy called Pat who will be coming to Chicago with me next year for the Sketch Fest and he said he is from Ely, and I said ‘oh I know some one form Ely, well not really Ely, but Wicken Fen.” And he’s all “Oh small world, whose that?” and I’m all “Name’s Bullman.” And he’s all “does he have a nick name?” and I’m “Yeah Vinny.” And he’s “Vinny! Vinny went to school with my sister and signed her year book.” And I’m all “Yeah he used to call me old and ugly and throw phonebooks and batteries at me while signing the This Morning theme song.” He, he, small world, small world. How I miss the Bullman.