Post Freddie ergo propter Freddie

One of the most appealing of logical fallacies is to suppose that two closely sequential events are somehow related. I think I’m falling for it.

The level of anxiety on the tube network has measurably fallen this week. The polices are visibly relaxed, fewer shoulders tense at the mere sight of a backpack, the normal atmosphere of mildly exasperated boredom has crept back in at the corners like the vile but somehow reassuring malodourousness of the local farm.

On Monday, we were all reading about how Freddie Flintoff had almost single-handedly rescued the second Ashes Test for England, prompting a famous (and squeakingly close) win. On Tuesday morning, the front page of the non-cricket-loving Sun had the earth-shaking news that Freddie was swearing off the beers in order to win us the Ashes. (As Andy pointed out last night, this amounts to laying off the lash for a whole four days between back to back Tests, a heroic feat clearly worthy of the front-page screamer ‘From Beero to Hero’.)

This morning, as those of us at work prepare to monitor the score as best we can, even grotty freesheet The Metro was offering a full-page explaining cricket to its many new followers.

The day before the bombs on 7th July, London was partying because it had unexpectedly won the right to host the 2012 Olympics. It’s crass, I know, but it does feel almost as though the wholly welcome distraction of the cricket has returned us, to some extent, to the unconcerned joy of 6th July.

A piece of paper can be held upright if slightly curled in the hand. If too straight, it collapses: it has no backbone. There is no real backbone here either, but we simulate it well enough, even through something as silly as winning a game of cricket.

Police presence

Disembarking from the tube this morning, I looked down the train and saw six yellow-jacketed police officers pop their heads out of the door almost as one. They exchanged some silly grins as they acknowledged this curious version of peekaboo.

At the exit of the tube station, six more yellow-jackets were busy checking passengers about to go through the ticket barriers. A white man is having his holdall searched. An asian lad is waved to a stop by a WPC before she clocks that he’s carrying no bag whatsoever.

The parades of sirens bugling down the streets are too common now to even raise prickles on the neck. The low panic of life in London at the moment becomes indistinguishable from a kind of black festivity.

Queue ED

The British and their queues.

Once outside the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, I asked an usher if this was the queue for admission.

“The what?”

“The queue. To get in.”

“You mean the line?”

“That’s it.”

“For a moment there I thought you were foreign.”

I’d always thought to that point that use of the word ‘queue’ irrevocably marked me as British, and perhaps English.

Last night I dashed out of the rain into the supermarket on the way home. There were four teetering stacks of baskets next to the automatic doors. I stood there while juggling my bag, coat and recalcitrant umbrella into an order good enough to allow me to pick up a basket.

Someone came and stood behind me. I continued fighting with that one spoke of the umbrella that refuses to furl. As I finally snapped it down, the polite German (for of course it could be no other) inquired:

“Are you queueing for the baskets?”

Is there, I wondered as I suppressed what would have been a rather rude laugh, any limit to the solicitious concern of your modern German for local sensibilities? The poor man must spend most of his day diligently lining up behind idling people in the nervous dread that they are secretly, imperceptibly, queueing for things.