I started reading “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf yesterday on the tube. I was on my way home from French class, and quite tired. It was a library book, and between the pages in the middle of the first chapter, I found a shopping list. On a pink piece of paper, written in blue, blotchy ink in a small, sprawling hand.
900 g cabbage
leek
yellow onion
beetroots
egg
optionally some minced pork
milk
yoghurt
liverwurst
pickled gherkin
blutsaft
frozen puff pastry dough
apples
satsumas
walnuts
almond flakes (spelled incorrectly in Swedish)
healthy porrige
I don’t know if I only was in a wierd mood last night, but for me, it read like poetry. It triggered my imagination. I think this person, who read “Orlando” before me, was going to make a stir fry with cabbage and then bake it into empanada style pastries. She was filling up her breakfast food supply. And I think she was a she, because she also seemed to be needing to fill up on iron. Iron deficiency is such a common issue for young women.
Then a man got on the train and sat down next to me. Quite handsome, my age, with a beard. But he was wearing a baseball cap.
Assholes are people too
it said. I found it hilarious, as a thing, but I’m not sure what choosing to wear it on his head says about him. Nothing too sympathetic, I think.
All in all, a quite amusing tube ride.
Katja Malmborg 