Sausages

Recently becoming a little self-conscious about the shape of my fingers and toes I began a daily survey of those I spotted on others, in order to rate the normalness of my own. A very good place to do this is on the tube. The vast realms of recent tube-inspired art have dwelt much on the amazing people spotting opportunities at your fingertips ...so to speak. In a colleague's descriptive terminology... shits and giggles. My first impressions of the tube led me to picture the masses as oversized and underimportant rats, being hoarded down the sewer pipes ...by the establishment pied pipers. The establishment pied pipers probably have long pied wily pied piper digits...but the digits displayed by the city rats vary vastly. Many have traveled far, many are spreading unknowingly the winter germs around, some were definitely not washed this morning and some have come directly from Miss Posh and Poncy Nail Parlour. Some are protected from the inclement weather by oversized fluffy gloves...or are the fingers themselves oversized...in which case the gloves would be acting as quite a cunning masquerade.... Some are tightly wrinkled, each crevice has a long dark story to tell, some are soft, gentle and seemingly Innocent. Some are tense, anxiety clutching the metro that the eyes are not focusing on, and others nervously tap out a late arrival. Some tap less intensely, in time to the stop/starting , the opening/closing and some tap in tune to mp3 music that must surely be on full volume to overcome the deafening rumble ..but then why can't we all hear the music each time the train stops at a station...maybe the earphones are just earplugs to block out the closeness of other rats? Some fingers touch a partner...some hold back form touching...but want to all the same. And some fingers look just like sausages.

I want to see whether any toes look like sausages too... but toes are much harder to spot in November...even with the vast eccentricities offered by the sewer world. I have to imagine peoples toes by the shape and style of their shoes. This imagining makes the toe variety ...endless.