Gordon Is A Mormon

One of my ongoing projects is looking out for people on the tube who don’t succum to the tyranny of the Associated Newspapers empire and bring their own reading material on the journey to work in the morning.

Then I congratulate them. Inwardly, naturally, I wouldn’t presume to talk to them.

This morning I got on a suitable stuffed tube only for everyone to unexpectedly clear out at Hammersmith. I managed to glean a seat between two people with non-Metro leanings.

I for my part was reading Journey to the End of the Night. Every time I get it out of my bag, I feel a certain frisson. I’m convinced someone is going to accost me and enquire as to why I’m reading a book by “that misogynistic Nazi prick“. This hasn’t happened yet though.

One of my non-Metro persons was smartly-dressed, smelling of washing powder, wearing a tie, looking somewhat earnest and reading a book the only words I could make out looking over his shoulder without looking odd were “Joseph Smith” and “missionary”. He must have been a Mormon.

On my other side was a teenage girl with split ends, reading a heavily annotated book which she was marking with further highlighter pen movements.

They are now my favourite two people. I was considering inviting them to my flat. We’d have tea and biscuits (obviously I’d ship in some barley cup) and discuss the sinister encroucement of free newspapers in the capital.

Then we’d work on our forthcoming treatise: Misogyny, Baptism of the Dead and Cracked Spines: Fun for All.