Wednesday, November 30, 2005

A bit of a rant - sorry

I left Art on time for once today, as I had the car parked at Warwick Parkway and was therefore able to drive myself home, rather than waiting for Rick to pick me up at 6pm. I was determined to get a train before the main rush hour, as I was taking my A1 portfolio of the term's work home (A1 is *big*). I made good time crossing Birmingham, and boarded a London train at 3.45pm. It sat there without moving. Then some engineers started fiddling with the doors. Eventually they kicked us all off onto the already crowded platform.

We waited while 2 trains that had been stuck behind came through. Then another London train came in - already full.

The behaviour of the people waiting had to be seen to be believed. Every man and woman for themselves, and heaven help anyone less mobile. I was quite near one of the doors, but was elbowed aside, and was struggling because of the portfolio case. I also noticed a lady with a toddler in a buggy, and stood aside to (rather pointedly) suggest that she go first. More people took advantage of this to shove themselves into the already crowded vestibule ends. The mum-with-buggy gave me a weary smile. "I don't think I'll get on anyway," she said.

So we both stood back and waited for the next train. Thankfully for her,
she only had another 15-20 mins to wait. I had another 45 mins.

I wasn't upset that the train broke down (these things happen). It was the behaviour of people that made me want to weep. Apart from the shoving itself, many of those people would have been local, and could have got another train in only 10-15 minutes. However, it was everyone for themselves. People sometimes don't think about each other, and I find that very sad.

On the plus side, I enjoyed art. Today, we took a random object, put it
where we couldn't see it, and drew what we could feel with our fingers. We
then tried the same thing with our own head, and then with someone else's
hand. We produced some fascinating drawings, each with their own characteristics and identity that showed the differences in the objects we were feeling. It's a bit like Betty Edward's contour drawing. Or the emerging art of a 2-year old ;)

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Carole,
We have that here, too, people are rude, especially on the road, they will practically kill to get one car ahead.
It is so annoying and one more thing to rant about is the treatment you get when you contact a company for help - they give you the directions to their web site and suggest you "do it yourself."
I hope you are well. Are you doing any writing? I will be taking a class in February for memoir writing, which I am going to tackle. Ugh, I wonder what kind of a disaster I will create there.
My husband and I went to a local community concert for Christmas last weekend - it was marvelous.
Bye for now,
Connie Scott

6:42 pm  
Blogger Carole said...

Hi Connie,
Good to see you here! Are you back home now?

I'm not writing at the moment, although I keep trying to start again. I've signed up for an Open University course starting in February, so we can compare notes! Memoir writing sounds interesting, and right up your street I would have thought. I've always enjoyed your life-writing.

I'm glad you had a good concert. We went to see a tuba quartet called Tubalate at a local village hall. It is part of something called 'Live and Local' which is a subsidised scheme bringing the arts out into villages. We were delighted with Tubalate, and learned a lot about tubas!

Carole

8:25 am  

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