Hurrying along

Words. They’re lovely things aren’t they?

When I lived in England, I would hurry. Or hurry up. Then I moved to Scotland and found myself scooting. “I must scoot”, I would say. I would scoot to the Co-op, which Husband and I called the Coop (we’re so amusing). Scooting to the Coop had a very pleasing feel to it. Scooting to school felt good too. It was for occasions such as these that school English lessons taught me the word alliteration.

Now in America, I hustle. I like that word. Hustle, hustled, hustling, hustle. It even sounds like what it means (there’s a word for that too, but I’m not going to use it – one word about words is enough showing off).

You’ve no idea what hustling can do for morale. Watching my son play soccer, for example, I hear another mom shout “Come on boys, half-time’s over. Let’s hustle.” She sees seven small boys in orange shirts and black shorts, who need encouraging into a second half. I see these people. For a short moment, I am aware of these facts: although I drove to the soccer ground in a Honda minivan in which the cd selection was Children’s Ultimate Party Album, Barney's It’s a Great Day for Learning, and Amy Grant’s Home for Christmas, and although the differential between my waist and hips isn’t anywhere near as large as it used to be, and although the extent of my interaction with young men these days is to yell “good jahb, CJ” at the goalie, deep down, deep down, I am oozing such ice cold urban chic that it is amazing my extremities haven’t frozen off, even though it’s in the 80's this afternoon and there’s no shade at the soccer ground. In another life, (I’m accumulating a worryingly large collection of these) I know I could be shoulder to shoulder with Marc Warren and his gang. I could be in that immaculately tailored business suit, no yogurt on the lapel. I could eat in minimalist restaurants with views over the Thames, where they don’t have a kids' menu. With my sheer craftiness and brilliance, and a few calls on a mobile phone thinner than a credit card… no… wait… thinner than a business card, I could trick business men, art dealers, tycoons, the lot of them, out of their millions. I could walk out of a lift towards a camera in slow motion, arms swinging, hips swinging, as the opening credits rolled. I could take on Marc Warren in quick-fire repartee. And win. The lovely word hustle does this for me.

I’ve had a fine old time with hustling on Youtube (who invented that thing? - as if we didn’t have enough demands on our time already). First, I found this truly marvellous clip from Hustle series 3 (sorry, it won't let me embed it here). It features the very building I once worked in, but I never saw anything even half as exciting from my window.

Next, there’s plenty of this:



I only included that out of sheer devilment, because people get cross with me when I leave them with a tune on their brain for the rest of the day, and this one is guaranteed. Doo doo doo, da doo, da doo doo doo.

Uber-suave con artists, naked bottoms flustering the tourists in Trafalgar Square, and one of the catchiest tunes of all time. As I said, hustling can do a lot for the morale. I don’t think I’ll ever want to go back to mere hurrying, or scooting (not even alliterative scooting).