"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

I was standing at the bus stop when...
12:40 p.m. on 2004-07-22

My sister terms them all as 'mentalists.'

(My sister doesn't believe in being PC)

There's the more common type. The ones who have skewiff hair and live outside of reality, a long way outside, who dress from the odds and ends of a Cancer Research shop, who don't work, and instead spend their time filling their house with Elvis merchandise and writing their memoirs about the time they were abducted by aliens.

I know this kind all too well, being related to several. (Everytime a doctor asks "Does mental illness run in your family?" I'm forced to have a long, hard think)

Then there's the "192" kind. The 192 is a bus service running 24 hours a day between Manchester city centre and the suburbs. It is renowned as being home to all manner of strange people, and as being a very dangerous place to find yourself at some early hour in the morning.

This kind insist upon forcing a conversation with the most unsuspecting soul, sitting down beside their victim despite an array of empty seats, and engaging them in some surreal conversation in which only one participant knows the topic.

There's the kind who stand on Market Street in Manchester, the scary kind. The bald man who promises that "Jesus will save all," and if we don't say yes he'll hit us over the head with the yellow placard, and THEN we'll see that Jesus is the Light.

Then there are people with invisible friends.

It was this type of person that passed me at the bus stop yesterday. A well dressed man in his thirties, quite good looking, with a very modern, hip style.

He brushed past me, assuring his invisible friend that "Jesus is alive" before wandering out onto Oxford Road to play with the traffic, all the while trying to convert thin air.

I didn't do anything. You don't, do you? Avoid eye contact, study your shoes, feel sympathy for the drivers trying to swerve the man in their path, and then forget all about it.

But I started to wonder, what happens to these sort of people? Will my man with his invisible partner, continue to weave his way into the city center, only stopping when he meets a less-than-careful driver? Or will he be stopped by police, maybe taken to a hospital? Will anyone report him, or will this be by pure chance? Will some kind stranger take him in, show him the way home?

The answer to that is undoubtably 'no.'

You don't, do you?

"Well, he might be dangerous. Or he might just be drunk. Or maybe doing it as a bet. Anyway, it's none of my business, is it?"

If it wasn't for certain chemicals bouncing around in my brain the way they are supposed to, I could be the one weaving my way up Oxford Road right now, or worrying people on a bus, or describing the little grey guys and their spaceship. And if it wasn't for those same chemicals bouncing around the wrong way in his, the man I saw yesterday could be leading a normal life. Could have kids, a wife, a steady job, a house in the suburbs, cherry tree in the front garden and Volvo on the drive.

Some things make you realise how random good health really is.

Meanwhile... my thumb hurts. I came in from aeorobics last night, stuck my pasta dinner in the microwave, it pinged, I put my hands in to lift it out and onto my plate, the steam rose up, burnt my hand, and I dropped it. Cue a comedy splat. Pasta, meatballs and sauce all over the floor, the walls, and me. From my shoulders to my toes (my socks are ruined), a lovely red splatter.

The kittens refused to lick it up. Darn them. They've got to be good for something!

Listening to: Meatloaf. Because sometimes the naff ones are also classics.

Quote: Fran: "Manny was something else, you know. You don't meet someone like him every day."

Bernard: "I met him every day. I met him all day and all night every day. Today's one of the few days I haven't met him. And even then he still wrote to me and rang me. I'm expecting a fax any minute."

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