Pickpocket Penis

I would like to once again thrill you with tales of the greatest form of public transport ever invented.... where one and all rub shoulders, step on toes, smell from armpits and steal from one another. Or try to anyway.

Picture this: it’s Wednesday evening, around 9pm and I’m alone. I’m changing platforms at Sevres-Babylon, from line 12 to line 10. As I walk down a short flight of stairs to my new platform, I look left at a sign board and am aware of another body using the stairs behind me. I obviously don’t pay further attention, but when a few seconds later something brushes the inside of my left elbow (the arm clutching my bag), without thinking or having time to process anything I whip around yelling. My small makeup purse drops to the floor at my feet and rolls down a few stairs. The young man behind me points at it and says: “ Your bag fell.” And I’m off, at the top of my voice I screech: “Like hell it fell, you touched me, I felt it. What else do you have in your hands?! You had your hand in my bag!” He denies it, but very weakly. I stomp off onto the platform and he climbs the stairs back up. As I had decided to use the button to call the station manager, I need to get a better look at the guy’s clothing. I go down on my haunches to see him at the top of the stairs and memorize what he’s wearing. When he sees me, the bad-ass pickpocket punk throws me a “QUOI?! QUOI?!” and without further ado, pulls his jeans down to reveal his willy. It bounces out and dangles there for a moment, then he pulls his pants back up and turns away.

On what planet would such a small, sad little thing that bobs out of the top of someone's trousers frighten me? I described him to the station manager and took my onward train. I hope they chucked that sad-ass out of the station, although what difference would it make in his life, really? Next time, he should be more careful about elbows - then he won’t have to display pee-pees.

Metro bag lady

Yes, I am obsessed with metro stories, seeing as I spend so much time on them and no, this particular bag lady is not what you might expect.
Our metro station, Bibliotheque François Mitterand, marks the start (or end) of line 14. Thus, very often, when you get to the platform there is a train waiting for it’s scheduled departure. Line 14 has no driver; everything is run by the little japanese finger inside a great computer somewhere out of sight. Line 14 also has two sets of doors that have to be conquered before you can get onto a train - one continuous glass wall on the platform, and then obviously the door on the train itself.

So, anyhow, it was one of those days when I sat in an unmoving train for about 2 mins, waiting for takeoff...people were strolling on to the train and sitting down and then, just as the closing door signal rang out urgently, two women came dashing towards us. The one in front was pulling a small suitcase behind her and it was this silly suitcase that obstructed the second woman from jumping on before the automatic doors shut with a violent shudder. The suitcase lady got her coat and one edge of the suitcase and her handbag stuck and it took two people inside the train to pull her and her paraphernalia in. Just as the platform doors closed, a second after the train doors, but before the train had pulled off, the second lady on the platform knocked hard on the glass and we all turned to look. “That’s my bag!” she gesticulated. The handbag that had been pulled on board with the first lady’s luggage, actually belonged to the second lady.

How that had happened, I don’t know. What was she doing tossing her handbag through the double sets of doors as they were closing?? The bag had been crushed by a door, jerked free by two people and was now on it’s way to St Lazare without its owner. What was even stranger, in my humble opinion, is that it wasn’t the silly suitcase lady who had caused a blockage in the first place who took responsibility for getting the bag back to its careless owner, but some totally innocent girl opposite me, who had been sitting on the train from way before take off! She gestured back at the bag lady, that she would get off at the next stop and wait for her. Then she looked at her watch and pulled an understandably annoyed face. The silly suitcase lady just shrugged at us on-lookers.

For some reason I was really cross with her - the silly suitcase lady that is. I thought it was out of line for her to have thrown herself onto the train and cause such a fuss (it’s always very dramatic when the doors slam onto people and other people have to wrench them free) and then not even have the decency to avoid further inconveniencing another passenger by taking the handbag that magnetically came on board with her, off at the next stop! I felt really bad for the girl that had been dragged into it and was now being made late by other people’s idiocy! But I didn’t have the guts to speak up and tell them what I was so pissed about... so I just shook my head and held it in... ahhhhh - the metro.

My RER Driver

RER A is one of the busiest train lines in the world. I overheard a woman telling her friend that a few weeks ago, and then an employee of the RER A line confirmed it and added to that information some neat figures that I can’t recall.

I use RER A every Tuesday and Wednesday to get to the OECD. I always catch the same train out (12h44) and the same train back (14h24) between Gare de Lyon and La Défense.
Last Tuesday, I was flying down the escalator to catch the 14h24, when the door signal went off and as I ran towards the first carriage, the doors closed. I threw the driver an imploring look, wherupon he opened the door to his driver’s booth and invited me in, saying that he couldn’t open the doors again, or there would be an onslaught of running people storming the doors.

And so it happened that I struck up a casual friendship with this driver, who answered all my questions about the functioning of the trains. He demonstrated the dead man’s handle and the emergency braking system and explained what all the knobs and buttons on the oversized dashboard are for.

On Wednesday, I climbed into his booth again and the adventure continued. Next Tuesday and Wednesday he is off duty, but we have agreed that I shall just keep looking out for him and climb into the driver’s booth when he’s on duty and I’m catching his train, so I can get the best view and catch up on how his farm animals are doing.

In what I have learned is typical French culture, we have not exchanged names yet. That comes later - much later. I will let you know how long it takes me to earn the right to know it!

Booties

Oh, the things you get to see when you’re rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed on the metro...
This morning, I’m reading on the metro when I look at a pair of black, patent leather boots that have come into focus near the top left corner of my page. They are of the just-under-knee, lace-up with silver hooks variety and very sexy. I assume that are attached to a lady who perhaps waits on street corners at nights... but what’s wierd is that the toes are pointing the wrong way. I let my gaze slide up along the boots, to see the wearer and this is the sight that greets me: a nerdy looking 30-something man with very short hair and an orange/beige/yellow striped polo-neck pullover, stretch jeans tucked into the ‘ho boots, and he is wearing the right boot on the left foot and the left boot on the right foot!!!
Whadtha’... ???

...too far gone

This evening I tried to gain access to my apartment...(tension building pause).... by displaying my metro pass to the front door.
Guess what? I’m still out there in the cold stairwell, wondering why the bastard driver won’t open the door for me....