The benefits of poor skincare
I'm living in Sydney at the moment. Living in the UK for 25/27ths of my life, Australia has quite a different and brilliant culture, full of randomness and things to amuse me. This is one such experience.

I was on the train home one Friday night, and there was this guy (I named him Mr Talky), standing near the doors of the train. He reminded me of the guy in the current advert for Oak milk drink. It's Youtubeable. A funny ad. Not cos Mr Talky was dressed like the guy in the advert, or looked like him, but his rhetorical words, voice and excited, stoccatoed intonation were pretty much the same. Mr Talky was really, really tanned, tracksuit bottoms tucked in his socks and wearing a brown and green tshirt and a blueish jacket that sort of completed the ensemble. He had curly hair. Not too long, but looked like it hadn't been cut for a while. And it was like Mr Talky was on speed or something. He was off his face. But not messy or all over the place. Just high speed talking to anyone that walked past him or happened to make eye contact. He wasn't threatening in the slightest and his chatter was interspersed with laughter and quite a few rhetorical questions. He was standing in a prime position by the carriage doors. I was sitting down for all of my 45 minute journey, but within 2 metres of him, so I could hear everything he talked to his unwitting victims about! It was increasingly funny mainly because I was able to look round at the 7 other people I was sharing the carriage with and see their exasperation at the absolute bollocks that was coming out of this guys mouth. At one point a guy sitting at the far end of the carriage but well within earshot of Mr Talky leaned forwards, looked up, sighed, and put his head in his hands. This made me break into fits of giggles. I could see the girl sitting next to me staring hard out of the window at her reflection into the darkness also kept trying not to laugh or cry.

I can't remember most of the subjects Mr Talky covered, but he had something to say about everything. Breaking out of prison, the best way to fly a helicopter, how some people could be child molesters but they look like normal people, and one of my favourites; how to deal with getting punched. Standing just in front of the Mr Talky was this dude dressed in a suit. Early 20s and quite big. He took offence to something Mr Talky said. I think it was about the kiddy fiddler thing; the big guy has thought it was directed at him. So they argued a bit and a fight looked like it was about to kick off, marked by the guy sitting next to me popping out his headphones, sitting up straight and leaning over to me saying "have you heard the shit that this guy is talking?! He's pissed off the wrong bloke".
So anyway, the fight about to kick off degenerated into a bit of pillow talk style foreplay, and the big bloke got off at his stop.
A few seconds later when the doors closed, Mr Talky exclaimed to his neighbour "ohhh, did you see that?! It could have been all over mate. Lucky i was here to stop it...." and then he gave some advice. Pure gold advice. Advice that the guy next to me scoffed at, and I made a high-pitch "haa!" noise to. "If you ever get punched, make sure you have dry skin. Dry skin makes the punch hurt less. You won't bleed as much. If you're lucky, the dry skin will protect you. The punch just slips right off."
(PaddedJungle, Mon 17 Jan 2011, 3:21, Reply)