Peas & Philosophies

Flimsy conceits rarely endure, do they.

I was concentrating keenly, for concentration is required to perfect the art of wearing a hat in a built-up area.

As I moodled along Racton Road, the sharp winter sunshine sprung the colours from my schmutter, the air was cold and precise, and the wind rattled ‘round my ears.

I felt pristine, like a pea freshly-popped from its pod, and my braces were vibrating at some kind of mystically harmonious frequency that created an aura of serene wellbeing.

I imagined I was a demobbed squaddie recently recognised for acts of uncommon bravery on the front line, strutting past a line of court-marshalled malingerers loitering at lamp posts.

Increasingly spry, I felt my momentum smoothing out my congenital limp, and the fleeting grace it afforded allowed me to swivel crisply on my newly-cobbled heels into Tamworth Street.

Soon, however, my lofty reveries were fractured by the raucous approach of a gaggle of local girls. A giddy riot of jelly rolls, rouge, and rudeness, they were bawling in each others’ ears and collapsing against each other with laughter. Indeed, they seemed to find their very existence hysterical.

They were brash enough, blurting schwas all over the place, but I was so taken with the vision I’d spun of myself that I prepared to indulge in a slither of dangleation with them.

As they approached, I fancied I was filling out me tufnells nicely.

Alas, it was the bait that hides the hook. Drawing level, and about to give them the trusty wink and hat-tip combination, my fragile imaginings shattered:

“Does your grandad know you’ve nicked his trousers?” one of them shrieked, sending my eardrum into spasm.

“What a shockin’ bad hat,” yelled another.

“Are you minding those legs for someone else?”

It had become clear that there was fat chance of a tupenny fumble today, let alone taking one of ‘em up the Trocadero.

Now, I align with the axiom that apparel maketh the man, but just look at the trouble a silk handkerchief, a whistle of herringbone, and a wayward gait can get you in. In fact it tempts one to disappear into the drab parade, to make every day a ‘dress-down Friday’, just for a quiet life.

Still, there’s a salve for every sore.

See, Ma’s forever instructing me to disregard goading and leg-pulling. She advises employing philosophy as my ally. The insight of the wise will defend me ably, whatever the situation, she insists.

She’s always arming me with gnomic and knowing epithets from the Greek and Latin eggheads; regularly serving me a snippet of Socrates or a Sun Tzu strategy to suck on, and then recall whenever I find myself the object of opprobrium.

So, while these frenzied harpies were spinning me around, fingering my lapels, and tossing my hat like a Harris tweed frisbee onto a nearby rose bush, I recalled the maxim that she whispers in my little ear‘ole most often. I don't know if it issued forth from the noggin of Mr. Aristotle, or if it was coined by his mentor Mr. Plato, but she always dispenses it immediately before turfing me out into the world:

"Ridicule is nothing to be scared of," she says, and “don’t you ever…” - but I’m out the door before she can finish, enlightened and emboldened.

And so, as these mouthy frippets skitted off into the distance, still intoxicated with their own cleverness, I managed to still my quivering bottom lip by reciting that line. It’s true my delusions took a bruising, but it demonstrated that when the outlook is Lanesborough-grey, and life’s put the kibosh on your adolescent esteem, it’s not events what’s important, but how you look at ‘em.

Flamin’ scallions and Up The Fulham!