And so I find myself, once again, unwillingly holding court on decency and good taste in the back of the bus. Desperately focusing my attention on a harmless early Banville while trying to ignore the stench of reading around me. On my left, a humongous brute gets to grips with the latest Tom Clancy epic with a series of heaving sighs and laboured scratchings. The intellectual-looking fellow to my right has elected to examine the dirt out from under his fingernails for the evening, a choice of entertainment somewhat preferable, I’d imagine, to my other neighbour’s ordeal. I am afraid to cast my eyes among the other passengers for fear that I might discover someone reading a decent fucking book for once in their lives. I might pass out from the shock.
Some feckless young reprobate warbles about beating his girlfriend through the thin speakers above me, but I am adequately protected by a moderately expensive pair of headphones (my finer set remain at home, of course. I could not expose them to the wider world in which I regularly find my own delicate constitution). I have selected the gentle twang of mid-century banjo playing to accompany my reading, but I’d like to reassure you that I am also comfortable with many musicians of a more modern bent. And also, it goes without saying, the great composers. It saddens me, though, that the more discerning among us must seal ourselves into cocoons to escape the lunacy of the masses. To avert our eyes and ears against the hijacked highways of our shared culture.
You have to despair, really, at the quality of men. I have to at any rate. You can go back to the comfort of your luminescent idiot-box and squeeze a few more drips of essence from your overworked and underpaid vice president. Or whatever it is you do with your foetid little evenings. I have no need for such a friendly ear as yours. Good day.