Don't listen to the voices

I woke up today with a bruise on my eyebrow. My eyebrow?! And I ask myself the question I hear every thirty seconds at work, How did I do that? It looks like I've headbutted the corner of my bed. Strange, but beside the point. The point is that I found enlightenment this morning on the 8.32 to London Bridge. Trying as I was to read my novel, I became more and more distracted and agitated by the number of foreign conversations taking place around me. Some physical, some cellular, all grating like nails on a chalkboard. Now I'm pretty sure this is no xenophobia as I've grown in up in the multicultural melting pot of south east London, and my father is originally from Singapore. So it puzzled me as to why these voices were setting me simmering on the edge. And then at 8.37 precisely, I see the light, the cause, the click- I am unable to eavesdrop. By chit-chatting a language of foreign tongue, these people are depriving me of my god-given right to pry. Why would they take this small pastime of mundanity from me? It is all that keeps me sane on this ten-minute railroad to nowhere.

Just then through the hubbub, one voice starts to stand out, distinct because of the repetition like a glass being tapped at a wedding. 'Good morning, Dell computers, how can I help?' Over and over she intones, a pilgrim mounting a one-woman call centre, 'Have you tried restarting? Is the monitor plugged in? Please hold. I'm afraid you've come through to the wrong department, I'll just transfer you.' But here's the twist. Our lady has no phone, no mobile, no headset, no bluetooth. Just wild eyes and a waving arm. And as she call handles at full volume, people shuffle and avert themselves from her frenzied gesticulations, and I register the insanity of our everyday lives, removed from context and displayed here for all to see.