One Good Thing And One Bad Thing

Last night my visitor and I went for dinner at London Sister's flat.  It was a lovely evening even if we had to spend it in Muswell Hill. We arrived about a quarter to seven and five minutes later the doorbell rang.   It was a neighbour of my sister's who she didn't know. LS had a huge rosemary bush in her garden which she was getting rid off so for a couple of weeks she had been leaving rosemary outside her house with a note telling people to help themselves.  Each time she did this the rosemary disappeared quite quickly.  The woman who called at her door last night had come to say thank and to give LS some homemade focaccia bread flavoured with her rosemary.  London is often characterised as a cold and indifferent place but people can really be generous and kind to each other.  This is the good thing.

The bad thing happened when my visitor and I were coming home.  It was a really hot night so we decided to avoid the tube and get the bus all the way to London Bridge.  The bus was almost empty and it was a good opportunity for the visitor to orientate himself in London.  England was playing last night in Euro 2024 and all over London in pubs people had been watching the match.  England's performance was lacklustre and the result was nil-nil so there were a lot of drunk and fed up people in the station.

We got  on the train and it was really busy so we didn't find seats beside each other.  I was sitting just across from two people, one was a woman who looked like she was coming home from work and the other was a very drunk man.  The woman was sitting next to the window and the man was on the  facing seat but he was sitting by the aisle.  He was so drunk I thought he was going to fall off his seat.  He had his feet up on the seat beside the woman and I could tell that she was uncomfortable.  The next moment he scooted across and was now sitting directly opposite her, still with his feet on the seat. By this stage I was glaring at him and then he started trying to touch her face at which point I jumped up and asked her loudly if she wanted to swap seats with me.  She looked both scared and confused and then understood what I was saying and immediately moved very quickly into my seat.  I didn't sit opposite the creepy man as I had only one more stop to go.  One of the things you always hear is that when people are being harassed on public transport other passengers ignore what's going on.  I'm not especially brave but the man was so drunk I don't think he would have been capable of doing anything to me.  It also helped that my visitor was only staying with me because he had been in England to do some martial art training and has just received his black belt.  I suspect if the drunk man had been aggressive to me he would have very quickly regretted it.

It was uncomfortably hot in London today. My visitor has gone out to meet his friends which I'm quite happy about.  He's going back to Kerry in the morning.

This afternoon I bought myself a hat as I have decided I'm definitely going on my walking holiday in northenr Spain and it will still be very hot when I'm there.

Comments

[Dr Leitrim sister]

Lovely hat

[Nelly]

Formidable.

[Steven]

Bravo for helping out a besieged passenger.

[amanda]

I was just reading about the TFL Stands against Hate campaign listening to Jennifer Cownie on a podcast so this is really timely.