I’ve always liked the Sex Pistols song ‘Anarchy in the UK’ as I find it hilarious, and often actually laugh out loud when listening to it, primarily because of the parenthetical insertion at the end: “… and I want to be an anarchist! (and get pissed). Destroy!” I was talking to my partner about this yesterday and he said the song is about “the lyricist passing judgement on the ‘anarchist’” which seems about right. It’s all about the petty acts of ‘revolution’ (that aren’t really) that might, just maybe, bring about anarchy. Like giving someone the wrong time when they ask. Or holding up a line of traffic!
I think we’ve all committed these small acts of subversion, that of course are utterly, mind-numbingly conventional (and unoriginal).
Mine was buying a Tube ticket (in the days when you had to go up to the window and ask, this was before we had Oyster cards!) at Charing Cross and asking for a ticket to “St Pancreas“. Revolution! Indeed.
The strange thing though is the other week I was buying some other train tickets for London and the guy working at the station at the ticket desk said “St Pancreas”, thinking I had misheard I ensured conversationally 
that it was said again, and there it was, St Pancreas. Is it a small act of subversion by a railway employee? A way of introducing some interest (and I use the word quite loosely) into an otherwise tedious day? Or perhaps this guy really thinks it is St Pancreas and no one has had the heart to set him straight!
Or perhaps it really is St Pancreas and I’ve been wrong all this time… now that really would be subversive. I’d get out my Tube map and check but I’m too busy starting my own small revolution.
