Ian Whitwam would really love to have a good old rant - but can't quite get beyond Quiet Desperation....
 Ian Whitwam |
The tube had conked out again. We were stuck for ages. We seethed and said nothing. A voice boomed through the carriage. The driver’s. It regretted something or other - in a gunpoint drone. Then it got excited.
'This is due to signal or points or human failure. Whatever. Or maybe it’s floods or fire or earthquakes or hailstones or leaves or nutters on the line or cats and dogs or Acts of God. I couldn't care less. I don’t care if this train ever gets to Elephant and Castle or Barking or Timbuktu. It don’t work. Nothing works. I don’t. I’ll probably get the sack for this. Good Morning.’
We cheered and clapped. He spoke for us all. He’d made a stand. He went down with all bridges burning. He was a Hero.
I’ve never managed this. I just do Quiet Desperation. I just mutter to myself and bark at phantoms - rehearse perfect rants at bosses, bankers, clampers, Line Managers consultants, kids’ TV presenters, pundits, pupils, kitchen unit salesmen, door stop fundamentalists...
.. OR CHELSEA FANS.. I was recently a guest at Chelsea. A small Majority of fans were busy kicking racism and sexism back into football. Two muscled and cropped oafs in front of me were wrestling with their Demons.‘We will never be mastered by any foreign bastards,’ they trilled - and much worse. I should have said...‘I’ve been listening to this stuff for years...and I’m sick of it. You’re either half-wits or blind or both. Your whole team come from all four corners of the earth. I can’t help it if your players are Mercenaries and your fans are dilettantes - and that you play showbiz football. If you want to watch the real thing just go to QPR. But you’d be chucked out, pal. So just shut it! Alright!’
Perfect. A Steve McQueen moment. But I didn’t.
...OR THE OFSTED INSPECTOR - who carts me off to a de-briefing session. I should have said..‘No - you just listen to me... you come into my classroom with your suit and clipboard with enough criteria to sink Socrates. You measure, monitor and mentor me. You murder to dissect. You assess, appraise and nit pick me. All you do is test. You’re the kind of killjoy who says that Beckham is a bit one footed. You turn classrooms into graveyards and teachers into robots. You drive decent people daft. You can take your tables and your targets, your gibberish and your jargon, your CATS and your SATS - and just go back to where you came from. Good Morning.’
But I didn’t. I promised to try harder.....
I can’t go heroic - unless I’ve had three whiskies. Then it goes all wonky and unnecessary.....A perfectly polite woman is talking to me at a party. She happens to remark that she’s a fan of the group Queen. She has triggered The Three Whiskey Tantrum.
I should not have said....
‘Queen? They are bloated, pretentious, and deeply meretricious - a grotesque mockery of everything that’s Rock n Roll. They are a malign force in the world. Anyone who likes their stuff is vulgar and tasteless - and has the inner life of an ant.’
But, I’m afraid I did.
Throughout these wobbling words my wife tries to disown me. Then she waves in vain at me. She mimes a gravedigger. Then she apologises to the nice baffled lady.
‘He’s had three whiskies. It’s time for his pills.’
And then she carts me off...
I wake up in shame. I must shape up. I must look for the hero inside myself. And it mustn’t take three whiskies.....
