Annie Macdougal, who helped my Granny keep her Isle of Mull cottage clean and tidy each Wednesday morning half a century or so ago, had many expressions and figures of speech that intrigued a boy like me. One of these was: ‘You can’t do right for doing wrong’.
I remember her saying it to me when I dropped and broke the ash tray into which my grandmother had ground the stubs of her two post-breakfast unfiltered Turkish ‘Abdullah’ cigarettes when I was helping clear the table one morning, and then wondering what on earth she meant. Over the years, I have come to know.
Last week, for example, I had just pulled into Waterloo Station on the much-maligned South-West Rail Portsmouth Harbour service, when I noticed a young mother struggling with getting two small children and a pram off the train, and onto the platform.
In the strange way they do, passengers were giving her thin, empowering smiles of encouragement, sympathy and a complete lack of practical interest as they squeezed past her, so it was left to me to say: ‘Can I help you with that’.
Now, you don’t get to feel like a hero much these days, so the warm, almost tearful, reception she gave my offer was rather heart-warming. She reacted as if I had offered to pay down her mortgage and fix Brexit in one go, to such an extent that even someone who is not averse to the odd bit of attention seeking himself was a bit embarrassed. To be honest, it made me feel like a saint, and I found myself brushing off her compliments with one of those ‘anyone would have done it’ comments. Which was patently untrue as at least twelve people before me had proved that they wouldn’t.
This was when the ‘Annie’ bit happened. As I reversed away from the pram, job done, I reversed straight onto the left foot of her infant daughter. As Caroline points out from time to time, I’m no longer the 11.5 stone racing snake who left the army 33 years ago and off it all kicked. I have no doubt it hurt but, by the way the little tyke was hopping athletically around, screaming blue murder for the benefit of the passing public, it wasn’t exactly terminal.
All the sweetness and light of the previous minutes fluttered off to the station rafters, and I went from being hero to villain. The child, who had seen me helping out the family, played the situation like a violin; the mother, who only seconds ago would have cheerfully signed my citation for an OBE, snarled her disapproval at my deliberate carelessness; worst of all, the faces of the passengers walking past from the rear carriages created the impression that I was a bastard relation upsetting the family at best, and a child cruelty practitioner, at worst. A tall woman in a green dress even stopped and asked the mother in a rather sinister way, if she ‘needed support’.
On it all went until, with my apologies falling like acid rain onto blighted potatoes, I gave up and walked away and into the welcoming, subterranean bosom of the Jubilee Line. My rising share price, if you happen to look at things this way, turned out to have been based on a Ponzi Scheme, and had crashed through the floor.
With that background in mind, you will therefore probably understand my own reaction when some idiot do-gooder jumped up and offered me his seat on the crowded train. I mean, for crying out loud, do I even look that old?
Thanks, Annie. Now I get it.
(PS I’ve been genuinely amazed by the people who have told me that this blog has become a tiny but important part of the architecture of their week, and have asked me to continue it. Thank you. This is for you.)
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