It's 1975 again

I love Glasgow and I adore it at this time of year when my dear green place becomes awash with russets, browns and burgundy, when all the trees decide to go on the ‘turn’. So on Saturday I headed into to town to look at clothes in fashionable shops that I can’t wear (they never look right on me) and look at coats that make my small dumpy frame look like a Hitler’s youth camp leader.

So I sauntered into my local underground tube station at Georges Cross and pulled out some change for the automated ticket machine. The 20p coin kept falling right through and finally after four attempts I gave up. I shook my head and huffed as I walked towards the ticket booth and the wee older man behind the counter said “just as well your head is attached to your neck or it would have fallen off shaking it so much at the machine, I bet you if I went to the machine I could make it work. Must be because you are a woman”

I stared at him in astonishment and simply said “A single please?” and imagined what it must be like to work with men who still think it’s 1975, the Bay City Rollers are number one and it’s ok to make mother in law fat jokes and call women ‘fat cows’.

He held onto to my ticket and repeated “must be a woman thing” and sniggered at me. Now normally I would verbally erase his damp polystyrene personality but I merely said “That’s sexist, can you please just give me my ticket?” and then took it and headed down the escalator quite calmly, because I know the best way to deal with this. I twittered it. I found the Glasgow Subway on twitter and included them in the whole debate.

Now I am dealing with the complaint professionally and can then publish the emails online and let everyone know what happened. That’s what I love about twitter and the internet. We no longer deal with shit like this alone, we can include our small world of followers on the ups and down of the service we receive and create a stooshy (Scottish word for trouble) very publicly.

A few folk have told me as comedian I should have had a sense of humour about the wee old man who is sexist and I did think about that, but then I recalled a good few young men and women work in that booth and imagine the shit he comes out with and they might not have the balls to deal with him. Maybe they wait for the day when the public finally snap and report him, well I just did. The Glasgow Subway people replied to my tweet and are dealing with it as we speak.

So now am in London where the autumnal carpet is gathering and my favourite view across the Thames looking down towards Westminster looks glorious in the late winter sun. Am staying with my mate is just back from New York and has no provisions in the flat but has a glut of ‘organic cleansing bark tree root’ and ‘virgin coconut oil’ and some dried garlic bulbs. Luckily in my bag I had a banana which to me is the world best fast food and can be carried in a handbag until a food emergency rears its head.

I believe that people who don’t have at least a brown loaf in the freezer or some cheese in a fridge must be subjected to getting their tits rammed in a door repeatedly until they remember for future. Of course am joking....I off to the local shops to get some breakfast meats and wish it was 1975 again, as I would buy some cheese crispy pancakes and settle down to watch SwapShop and hope David Essex will come on live and talk cockney. I would pull on my size 10 tight ribbed polo neck and stroke the flat area where gigantic breasts will eventually grow and shake my snakelike hips to the Bay City Rollers and wonder if one day I will marry Donny Osmond. 1975 you were good to me.