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The Wheels On The Bus

On Sunday night I slept really badly.  I have a cold, again, and I woke up several times in the night. When the alarm went off I desperately wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.  Instead I dragged myself out off bed.  Having started badly the day got worse.  My journey to work was much longer than usual as I got stuck on the hipster line for almost half an hour.  There is only so long you can admire a waxed moustache and slightly too short trousers before boredom sets in.  

I was late for my meeting.  It was a decidedly ill-tempered meeting and after it was over I had to go somewhere else for another meeting and then I had another meeting and by then I was really fed up with meetings.  When all the meetings were over I footered around for a bit and then I left work and headed for the bus stop.  I was feeling a bit dispirited when suddenly, round the corner there appeared a gleaming, brand new Boris bus, waiting to transport me to the station and my heart lifted.

I can't describe how exciting I found this (this reminds me of a transport planning joke I once made up. Is that a modal shift in your hand or are you just pleased to see me? If you know about transport planning this is wildly funny).  I entered the bus, rather boringly through the middle doors.  It was heaving with passengers.  Normally when I catch this bus there are very few people on board - maybe a couple of teenage girls and one granny.  Last night every single seat was taken by white men in their 40s, 50s and 60s.  Many of them were bearded (but none had waxed moustaches) and everyone was taking photographs.  One man was being interviewed by another.  There was one other woman on the bus and she was having a loud mobile phone conversation.  ".....yeah, three different doors, one at the back, one in the middle.....no, all men.......yeah, a conductor".

I joined in with the oohing and aahing, admiring the glass curved panel by the front stairs and wishing I could hop off at the back.  The conducer, who doesn't take fares, but is there to "reassure" passengers, looked a bit embarrassed.

People in the street were whipping out their phones and cameras to take pictures of the bus and its passengers.  I couldn't help posing a little.  I imagine this must be what it is like to be Victoria Beckham or the queen.

I wondered how many people on that bus realised that it was built in Galgorm close to where my sister lives. Not many I thought and then I thought again.  I'm sure every single one of those bus spotters knew every single thing about that bus.

My five minue journey cheered me up no end.  If this bus does become an icon, like the routemaster, I'll be able to tell my great-great-great nieces that I was one of the first Londoners to travel on a Boris bus.

Doesn't mean I'll be voting for him though.

A Trip To Norfolk

I'm off to Norfolk this evening, catching a train from King's Cross. I still find it quite exciting getting trains from certain stations in central London. I associate it with my youth when I was either travelling to Scotland on my way back to university or, more rarely going to Holyhead to get the ferry to Ireland. Tonight I'm only going as far as Kings Lynn where I'm meeting my niece.

I had never visited Norfolk (well not counting Norwich) until K moved there.  I associated it with broads, birds and old, rich Londoners' second homes.  Years ago I overheard an imminent architect talking to someone about council tenants and he was saying.

"Well, of course they are not like us - they don't have a cottage in Norfolk to escape to every weekend."  I'm not sure who the "us" were who he was referring to - certainly nobody that I know.

K is neither rich, old nor a Londoner but despite this she seems to be very settled there.

Tonight we are going to eat fish and chips and tomorrow go walking in the salt marshes.  I am very much looking forward to it.

 

 

 

A Big Connection

  Somewhere in Belfast there’s a hospital consultant whose great-grandmother taught herself to read by going to matinees and watching silent movies – mouthing the words along with the actors while looking at the subtitles.  In London there’s a girl called Lucia – who once was Lucy – who helped set up a theatre company.  “She went to a place called RADA.  Have you heard of it?”  A woman in Dundalk  whose mother could remember in 1916, people waiting on the station platform to shout up at passengers on the Dublin Belfast train for news of relations imprisoned in Kilmainham.  In Australia there’s a nun called Faith and a man called Jim who worked for Qantas. 

All of these people are related to me but most of them I’ve never met.  I can’t keep straight the links between them and don’t know which generation these Peters, Jims and Marthas belong to.  Some of the names are so dated they must be Edwardians or under twos, the Mamies, Salinas and Almas.  Lots of them are scattered; England, Australia, Scotland, America, New Zealand.  Many of them are dead.  The teenage boy who disappeared in the Blitz, whose father, demented, wandered round Belfast for weeks afterwards asking people if they had seen him even though he had died of his injuries in hospital.  A journalist in South Africa murdered for his car keys.  People who had died in old age in their own beds surrounded by their families.

These people were all real to my mother even if she had met them only once or twice.  Some she did know really well and some she hadn’t seen since they were children.  The journalist in South Africa was “a lovely wee boy”. The London actor’s father kept in touch with her, ringing every few months for news of his country relatives.  She wrote to Faith in Australia and her cousin in Dundalk and fretted when they were slow to reply.

 My mother was proud of her family and how well-doing they were.  These grandchildren and great-children of a big, working class North Belfast family, many of them successful, beyond the wildest dreams of the members of that original family, were a source of great pleasure to her.

A “big connection of them” is how my mother described large extended families.

I only half-listened to her stories and now that big connection, that existed only for her, is broken .

 

Lunchtime

 

I was feeling a little bit fed up today so I took myself out to lunch.  One of the many ways that my current job is better than my last job is the quality of the places to eat nearby.

 

The cafe I went to today is tucked away in a stretch of shops that in other parts of London would consist of a fried chicken shop, a halal butcher and a newsagent.  Here, in the trendiest part of the universe, we have a shop that sells vintage china and children's shoes, a vintage wine shop and a cafe cum community radio studio.

 

The seating in the cafe is made from apple crates and clearly the interior designer had a thing for corrugated iron.   Everyone in there dresses like me and friends, or rather how me and my friend dressed in the 80s (except none of us had waxed moustaches). 

 

For lunch I had a latte and to eat advocado with lime and chili on sourdough toast.  It was very tasty.

 

The first time I went in there it was was quite busy.  I appeared to be the only person who wasn't a friend of the girls who work in the cafe.  Everyone seemed to know each other. It was all:

 

"Hi Aaron, saw your show last night. It was really cool.  Flat white?  Yeah, it was excellent.  We're going to make an awesome roast dinner on Sunday.  You gotta come! It's on the house!"

 

When I told Traybake about this he asked me if I was sure I hadn't wandered into someone's house by mistake.

 

"They were probably thinking who's that?  Has someone's mother come to visit?  Poor thing probably has Alzheimer's.  We better play along with her."

 

I went for a short walk after I'd been to the cafe.  There was a definite hint of spring in the air. 

 

By the time I got back to the office I had cheered up and I quickly completed a tedious piece of work and got a big thank you for doing so.  I celebrated by going home early.  I am very glad it is the weekend.

 

Near Far Away

Near

Once when I was out driving with my mother, as I recall up one side and down the other side of the Ards Peninsula, she pointed out some sheep to me.

"They're very big those sheep, so they are?"

"That's because they're cows!"

Since the first of January I have been postng a photograph on Flickr every day.  This is much more difficult to achieve than it might seem.  First of all I have to remember to take my camera with me everywhere and then I have to remember to actually take a photo.  Having done that I have to upload the photo and post it to Flickr.  What this means more often than not is that around nine or ten at night I am frantically searching round my extremely small flat for something to photograph. It also means that I am posting a lot of very mediocre photographs.  Zoe is doing it as well but she has a greater variety of subjects than me.

The little chairs and the birdhouse are actually christmas tree decorations which I forgot to put away.

Today I have been doing housework and listening to music which somehow I have got out of the habit of doing, that is both listening to music and doing housework.  Lucinda Williams and Iris DeMent have assisted me in cleaning the kitchen and mopping floors.

Tonight I am going to a party.  It is so long since I have been to a party that I have forgotten what you are supposed to do at one.  I know it involves trying not to drink too much and keeping out of the kitchen.  The former is not a problem for me ; the latter is slightly more difficult.  There will be a lot of architects at the party so I suppose I better make an effort to wear something suitable. Some class of an asymmetrical dress or frightening glasses.  Unfortunately I don't have any items like these about the place.

Earlier today I had tea with TB and he showed me details of an academic conference he is going to.  One of the papers was entitled something like:  Your P***y Will Thank You For Reading This Paper: A Discourse.   To think that tax-payers are funding this kind of filth.

 

Far away.

Speak Up And Save A Life

When I was a kid there was a woman who came to chapel on Sunday mornings wearing sunglasses even when it wasn't sunny. Thinking about it even if it had been sunny women in those days didn't wear sunglasses. At least not the ones in our half-forgotten parish. She wasn't young or she wasn't glamorous but she was attempting to hide something, unsuccessfully as everybody, apart from us kids, knew what it was.  I'm not sure what happened to her.  Nothing too awful I hope.  

I'm sure if you think hard enough about it you know, or have known, a woman like that as well.

Brrrrhh!

I have a terrible lurgy and have taken to my bed.  

I was supposed to be going walking today but due to heavy snow overnight the whole of London is closed down and I assume that no trains are running.  Even if it hadn't snowed I don't think I would be up for a walk.  

I have a sore throat and a racking cough.  I haven't been feeling well for a few days but have managed to drag myself to work every day and to go out.

On Thursday I went to see Coriolanus with my friend Ms M.  Coriolanus isn't my favourite Shakespeare play and, studying it for A Level didn't make me like it anymore.  The film though was very good and would be excellent for kids today doing this at school to watch  apart from the fact that there is quite a lot of stabbing in it which might give a bad example to children (see also: teenage suicide, anti-semitism, murder, and dressing up as animals in other popular works).

Yesterday I went to the local food market and bought ingredients for breakfast.  It's a very good market where it's possible to buy both inexpensive and  eye- wateringly expensive food.  Yesterday a woman in front of me in the queue spent £7.80 on one  loaf of bread.  I, on the other hand, bought half a dozen organic eggs for a pound.  Last week I bought some very expensive beef.  I planned to make a casserole and on Sunday evening I chopped up some onions and went to get the beef out of the fridge but it was nowhere to be seen.  After some frantic headscratching I discovered it was in fact still in the shopping bag sitting next to a red hot radiator.  I ended up having a makeshift dinner of pasta with fried onion and parmesan cheese which was odd nicer than it sounds.  The beef went into the bin.

In the afternoon yesterday I met friends at the Royal Academy to see the Hockney exhibition.  I am in two minds about it.  It was certainly very accessible.  The kind of exhibition I would have adored when I was ten.  Afterwards we went for a cream tea in the Wolseley which was first time I'd been there.  Disappointing lack of famous people in attendance.

On the way home by the time I got to London Bridge it had started to snow.  Later in the evening I went down to Traybake's for dinner which was lovely despite TB making me sit at the opposite end of the room in case I smit him with my cold.  He also got a bit panicky looking when I was speculating about how I might have to stay the night due to be being snowed in.

This morning when I woke up I felt like death.  I am still in bed and may stay here for the remainder of the day.