In on a Saturday Night (Looking at the Lunar Eclipse)
This is perfectly normal for moi (not the eclipse part mind). Going out on Saturdays is for social butterflies, and people with energy. Possibly. Plus you can't beat sitting in and watching MOTD. Though maybe not everyone would concur.
Had a lovely Satur-day though. The olds dropped by, and we went for a Tapas lunch in Stow Village. Yum. Then went on a London walk from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace. There's a lot of surprisingly pleasant walks through the stinky big city. And this fairly gentle amble was along a disused railway line. Sort of wished I'd had my wellies on, as this had become one long mud-pit thanks to the abundant rain of the last few days, but was really enjoyable nonetheless. There's even an abandoned station at one point, near Crouch End. The trainspotter in me enjoyed getting up onto the derelict platform, and shouting "boop boop" at the top of my voice. Reminded me of Gort station in Galway, which I visited some years ago. At that stage it was much more intact (rails and signal box still present) and this made it even more eerie. As you stood on the rails, you wondered if one more locomotive might be charging down the line towards you...and there it's easy to imagine all the great literary figures that might once have graced the platform - W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw all peering into the distance, to see when their train might arrive...
Having been raised (by "green" parents) to catch public transport wherever possible (and we did go absolutely everywhere on the train) I am very sentimental towards this kind of travel. Unless I really really need to get somewhere on time, and British Transport is failing me miserably, I positively enjoy catching a bus, or taking a train. I also feel very creative at these times. I think it is because you can sit back, look out the window (or at your fellow passengers) and see anything and everything. A sombre example of this was on Wednesday evening, when I was passing through Tottenham Hale, at close to midnight. Opposite me, on the bus, was a horribly thin woman. She was swamped in baggy clothes, with skeletal arms poking from the sleeves, and the skin across her face was stretched so tightly, that all you could see was the skull underneath. Compared to her tiny frame, her eyes seemed huge, but she was blinking very slowly, as if even this was an effort. She must have been an anorexic, or very seriously ill in some other way. Simply sitting down was causing her pain, and she was shifting in her seat, grimacing, presumably because her own bones were digging into her. I was trying not to stare, not least because it was bringing me close to tears. She was just going from A to B, reading a book, and doing what millions of people do every day to get home, and yet she was clearly very close to death. I don't think I will ever forget her face.
Had a lovely Satur-day though. The olds dropped by, and we went for a Tapas lunch in Stow Village. Yum. Then went on a London walk from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace. There's a lot of surprisingly pleasant walks through the stinky big city. And this fairly gentle amble was along a disused railway line. Sort of wished I'd had my wellies on, as this had become one long mud-pit thanks to the abundant rain of the last few days, but was really enjoyable nonetheless. There's even an abandoned station at one point, near Crouch End. The trainspotter in me enjoyed getting up onto the derelict platform, and shouting "boop boop" at the top of my voice. Reminded me of Gort station in Galway, which I visited some years ago. At that stage it was much more intact (rails and signal box still present) and this made it even more eerie. As you stood on the rails, you wondered if one more locomotive might be charging down the line towards you...and there it's easy to imagine all the great literary figures that might once have graced the platform - W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw all peering into the distance, to see when their train might arrive...
Having been raised (by "green" parents) to catch public transport wherever possible (and we did go absolutely everywhere on the train) I am very sentimental towards this kind of travel. Unless I really really need to get somewhere on time, and British Transport is failing me miserably, I positively enjoy catching a bus, or taking a train. I also feel very creative at these times. I think it is because you can sit back, look out the window (or at your fellow passengers) and see anything and everything. A sombre example of this was on Wednesday evening, when I was passing through Tottenham Hale, at close to midnight. Opposite me, on the bus, was a horribly thin woman. She was swamped in baggy clothes, with skeletal arms poking from the sleeves, and the skin across her face was stretched so tightly, that all you could see was the skull underneath. Compared to her tiny frame, her eyes seemed huge, but she was blinking very slowly, as if even this was an effort. She must have been an anorexic, or very seriously ill in some other way. Simply sitting down was causing her pain, and she was shifting in her seat, grimacing, presumably because her own bones were digging into her. I was trying not to stare, not least because it was bringing me close to tears. She was just going from A to B, reading a book, and doing what millions of people do every day to get home, and yet she was clearly very close to death. I don't think I will ever forget her face.
posted by TheMightyDing at 22:53
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home