Morning routine

Last year I had an early start at one of my universities, with a rush hour commute. Taking the trains (I needed to take three different lines) at rush hour makes me tired and stressed before I even start my first class, so I solved this problem by getting up at 5.30 and taking my trains before the rush hour. There is a Royal Host chain restaurant near the university which provides a cheap breakfast with endlessly refillable coffee, so I'd sit in there for about forty minutes eating and drinking coffee until I was very, very awake.

This year I have TWO of these early starts, on consecutive days. This means that I am at Royal Host two mornings a week.

Last year I noticed (how could I not) that there were always two guys there at the time I arrived, also having breakfast. They are not together, but they are always there. Sometimes there are one or two other people as well, but those two are the only regulars. We always sit spaced widely apart. It is a big restaurant.

One of them is no problem at all, although he is rather odd. He is painfully thin, has a limp, and wears a suit and a very old-fashioned hat. He doesn't ever take his hat off, even when he's eating breakfast. I suspect he is a professor, but haven't yet seen him around campus, so I might be wrong. He could be a spy. I never see his face because his hat is pulled down over his eyes, and last week every time I looked in his direction he was looking at me, and quickly looked away. But I will worry about him some other time.

The other guy I am fairly sure is not a professor, although nothing is impossible. He is older, and quite hard of hearing, and also has trouble seeing. (Why can't we say 'hard of seeing'?) He uses one of those little magnifying lenses as well as glasses, and when he makes a phone call on his mobile (which he has done every morning I've been there) he peers at his phone through this lens as though he is examining a bacteria in a petri dish. Sometimes he asks the waitress for help finding the numbers.

And it's these calls that I want to talk about. I know it's taken me a while to get there, but while I'm writing I'm also mulling. And I have mixed feelings about these phone calls.

This guy has a very loud voice. He is the sort of person who, when he moves in his chair, moans loudly. You cannot ignore him. He is seated at one end of the restaurant and I'm at the other (by choice) and nobody else is there except the silent and enigmatic man in the hat, so it's nice and peaceful. Then there is a sudden loud moan and I am startled out of my newspaper. He breathes loudly. He sighs. He sucks his teeth. He mumbles to himself. He shouts at the waitresses (kindly - his shouting is because of his deafness, I think). He MAKES NOISES that are impossible to ignore.

Then he makes his morning call.

This morning call is conducted at a blisteringly high volume, and he also has a speech impediment of some kind so he is hard to understand. I used to determinedly ignore the noise, except for the occasional icy glare over the top of my newspaper (which had no effect at all, no doubt because he can't actually see me) but ignoring it doesn't actually work. You can't ignore it. It intrudes.

So a couple of weeks ago when I turned up at 'Royal Host,' spotted him, remembered this morning purgatory and got irritated all over again, I decided to listen instead. I listened carefully. And angrily. I put down my newspaper and stared fixedly at him while he was making his call. He didn't notice me staring, no doubt because he can't see a damned thing, but I paid close attention.

I had always assumed he was calling his workplace. The only bits I'd noticed him saying before had to do with 'today I'll be too busy to come' and 'I'll see you later on in the morning, but try to make that appointment for me at 2pm' and things like that. I thought he had his own business, perhaps, but hadn't actually given it much thought, and it sounded boring and trivial anyway. Also, it's easy to tune out of a language that isn't your own. You hear the noise but don't hear the words, and this guy's speech impediment makes it easier to not understand, especially when you're irritated.

But I'm not so irritated, now. I've had a change of heart, sort of. And I think that he must be calling some long-suffering family member, not a workplace. In fact I'm pretty damned sure it is not a workplace. The four phone calls I've have now carefully listened to from beginning to end have all been about how constipated he is and how much his piles are troubling him. The first one was on my first Thursday back at work, two weeks ago. The next day I got to hear that his bowels managed to move a little yesterday but it was really painful, and he doesn't think the medicine is working. Last Thursday his piles were bleeding and he thought he might need to visit the doctor again. "IT'S HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE!" he hollered into the phone. "MY BOTTOM IS BLEEDING!"

The weird thing is that although it annoyed me even more at first to discover that this guy was entertaining the entire restaurant with his bowel problems ('entire restaurant' meaning me and the man in the hat and the two waitresses), by the third time I'd started to feel quite involved, and far less irritated. This is confusing. I disapprove of people causing such disturbance in a quiet restaurant at an early hour, but I also want to know what happens next. Did his bowels move yesterday morning? Are his stools still hard and brick-like and take forever to pass? Did it hurt? Is his bottom still bleeding? Did the doctor offer any relief?

He ends these calls with a cheerful "Don't worry, everything will be all right!" every time, and squints at his phone to switch it off. Sometimes he yells for a waitress to do it for him, and they always treat him courteously and kindly. When that's done he shifts in his seat and moans loudly. Then he heads for the toilets, muttering, and is gone a long, long time.

But I have to wait to find out whether his toilet visit was successful, because he only ever makes one phone call.

I'm still not QUITE sure how I feel about this. A large part of me wishes he'd just shut up. On the other hand, the newspaper isn't all that interesting, and I have discovered unexpected twinges of sympathy and tolerance I didn't think I was capable of. If he isn't there when I turn up next Thursday I think I'll be worried.

Is it possible to die from piles?