The train journey between Marlow and Bourne End (the first leg of my morning commute) lasts about 10 minutes. Because Marlow doesn’t have a train station, a man walks through the carriage selling tickets. This is needed because if you get anywhere near London you invariably cannot leave a platform without showing a ticket - and if you don’t have one you face a fine.
Normally everything works well - the guy selling tickets wanders down the train and you hope to get a ticket before reaching Bourne End. Unless you had wanted to buy one this morning.
The lady sat behind me - the second passenger he was dealing with - didn’t just want a ticket. She wanted to confirm her entire itinerary for the day. Questions about this ticket - that ticket - the other ticket - “what if I leave at this time”, “what about that time”…
The result of this was she was the only passenger that got a ticket on the entire train. How selfish is that? She must have realised that many other people on the train also wanted to purchase a ticket (luckily I have a season ticket), and now were going to miss their connecting train because of her.
Perhaps some people really don’t think about anybody else except themselves. It seems very alien to me - I put myself last by default. Last night was a good example; on the underground coming home I remained standing so an old chap could have a seat. He thought it was humorous that I mentioned to my colleague “it’s okay - I’ll let this older chap have the seat”. Even then, there were two gentlemen, and the younger of the two grabbed the seat, forcing the more elderly one to stand.
Whatever happened to courtesy and respect for our elders (no matter how old they are)? I suppose I was guilt of that this morning though - thinking badly of the lady monopolizing the ticket seller. Maybe that was just thoughtlessness though.
Please let something more interesting happen to me than the commute. There must be more to life… Perhaps it’s a reflection of my life at the moment - most of it is taken up with work, and I’m not allowed to write about that. Home is taken up with decorating in preparation for the impending arrival of adopted children.
Ah - a subject. How do you decorate children’s rooms when you have no idea what age or sex the children will be? At the moment we have chosen indestructible carpet, painted walls magnolia (silk finish, which we are told you can wipe clean), and ceilings white. Hopefully further decoration will take the form of clip frames, posters, curtains, duvets, lightshades and rugs.
We have thought about taking the children (if they are old enough) straight to Ikea with us to choose their own bedroom - with a healthy amount of prodding towards something practical of course. If they are too young for that we will face our first decision for them, and hope they like it.
When I was a child I liked just about everything anybody ever did for me - or perhaps “accepted” is the better word. When you are young you don’t realise there are choices - and therein also lies the answer to why so many abused or neglected children don’t get reported. They think it’s normal. They don’t realise that life can be different.
It’s going to be so fantastic to give children who have not had a “good” choice the best options we can. Yes, we’ll be poor, and yes, we’ll be secretly stressed, but we’re going to be happy.