I was standing in a crowded lift at work. Also in the lift were two women. One of them was holding a Black & Red notebook and a regulation pass for the building and was therefore clearly a full-time employee of the same company as I. The other was sporting a visitor's pass and was obviously a guest in the building.
Full Time Employee: "So, where is it you've come in from again?"
Visitor: "Kazakhstan."
FTE: "Ah right, I've never been there."
Visitor: [smiles politely]
FTE: "The nearest I've been is probably... well, I went to Singapore once, but that's..."
Visitor: "Nowhere near it."
In that 10-12 second exchange, I felt a wide selection of emotional responses, starting with absolute anger at the FTE's response to the Kazakhstan information. Who cares if you've never been there, you small-minded, blinkered mofo? Why don't you try and expand your horizons a bit? There's a Kazakhstani national standing in the same airspace as you. Why not ask her what it's like there? People's merry bubble existence drives me spastic. Then I felt absolute horror and the simultaneous desire to laugh at the Singapore remark. And sympathy for the Visitor who tried to show polite interest and didn't spit in the face of the ignorant FTE. I don't know where all this passion came from, given that it was before 9am on a Monday morning, but that's what happened. No wonder I'm always so exhausted when a journey in a lift is so stressful.
Plus I have admittedly been burning the candle at both ends of late, while holding it with a pair of tongs and firing the mid-section with a blowtorch. I am all out of wick. Wednesday night I went to a secret supper club in Brixton, where the host opens his home two nights a week to 16 strangers and cooks them the most glorious food I've had in quite some time. It was almost emotional - such an extraordinary hidden gem full of simple, uncomplicated sensations of love and passion without cynicism or caveat, which rekindled my never-that-latant fondness for city life. Then on Thursday I fasted until the evening, when it was Joanna's birthday party and I walked to the pub in the pouring rain and we ate oh-so-much pizza and delicious apple bakewell. Friday day was spent with the Glastocrush, doing a psychometric test at a gentlemen's club in Mayfair (you couldn't make it up) and then rushing home to face a dramatic pre-birthday-party wardrobe malfunction combined with too-many-incoming-phonecalls crisis when at one point I was completely naked except for a very fitted black halterneck top, barking down the phone at Emily while the GC stood by with wondrous dedication, wondering how he could help - but, short of developing an ability to perform miracle cellulite-busting, body-firming algae wraps in the confines of my flat, there was pretty much nothing he could do. Eventually we made it to my party where twelve of us went bowling in Bayswater and ate and drank too much more, and then three of us went on to the midnight show at The Comedy Store, and then two of us went back to my flat and talked until 4am. On Saturday we did an hour of yoga to sweat out the hangover, and then went vintage shopping for just under six hours (this is me and Grania, by the way, not the GC, who was working but would have wept openly if I'd made him shop on his day off). Despite our hangovers we managed to shop with impressive dedication and harmony, only complaining about vintage arm on one or two occasions, and avoiding an actual fist fight over a turban with admirable diplomacy. Then in the evening I went over to the GC's flat for an impromptu BBQ on the roof with two others, and we wrote messages on a Chinese lantern, lit it and winced as it flew, at speed, into a large chestnut tree, but were thrilled when the second attempt lifted high up, unfortunately then extinguishing almost immediately and coming down somewhere around a nearby sports centre. Yesterday was Sunday and I played frisbee in Green Park and didn't humiliate myself entirely as far as I'm aware, and then I went home and hoovered and tidied and wiped and dusted and ironed and now I'm feeling slightly less hectic, especially with the prospect of another night at the flat tonight. But calm or not, all of the above might help one to understand why an overheard conversation in an elevator is enough to tip me over the edge. Maybe I should take the stairs.
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