part two

This birthday feels to me like passing

my 11Plus for the second time. And please don’t tell me all that “it’s only a number” stuff.     

My parents were pragmatic about age, though they adapted quite differently.  And I was never disillusioned because I was never illusioned.  “Just do this and you will – “ has its place in fairy stories but you confuse wishes and dreams

with real life at your peril.    Or as Marilyn Monroe sang “When you get what you want, you don’t want it.”

Most of us remain very susceptible to good will.  It doesn’t take much to make you feel better – a greeting, a few words, a kind action.  And thank heaven many of us know that to keep the good will muscles working, we express appreciation.  But appreciation and good will don’t work like debit and credit.  It’s not as straightforward as I give you so you give me.  I give you – and with luck, somewhere down the line, I get back what I put in.  Or something just as good.

Yesterday on the bus there came from upstairs an immense almost unintelligible wall of noise,

often evidence of an unquiet mind and recourse to the bottle.   The driver paused.  The bus was not full.  We listened, the driver didn’t want to go upstairs.  Heaven knows what he would get into and he’d risk missing his place in the schedule.   I am ill equipped by age and strength, all too aware that “having a go” often ends in somebody else having to come to the rescue.  We waited.

A young woman came downstairs.   “Drunk or deranged ?” I asked.   She didn’t know.  But as she “placed” me (elderly but OK ), her shoulders came down and she smiled. The men behind me shrugged patiently and the driver put the bus in gear. 

A couple of stops later, a young family

got on – parents, a boy and a girl under five – and they went to the stairwell, where they were arrested by my voice saying “Excuse me” twice. They paused and the man looked at me.  “There is a shouter upstairs,” I said. “The sound is horrible.  It might frighten the children.”  He and his wife beamed thanks and took the children elsewhere.    

We drove without further mishap to my stop and as I got up the children’s father said “Thank you for your intervention – it is much appreciated “.  

  I can’t remember this ever happening to me so I said “You’re most welcome –“ and, grinning at the rest of the maybe 15 passengers  -“I know, .nosey old woman !”  And they grinned back. “But it is such an assault – take care, good luck –“ the children waved me goodbye, and I went off  home smiling to myself.

I was 30 when I began as a “problem page editor” in women’s magazines before the term “agony aunt” was current and I worked in radio concurrently.  Print and sound are often different disciplines.   Part of the crossover is you can”colour” your voice, it’s much more difficult to do in print.   And the other bit of the crossover, beginning with letters but continuing through email and texts, was how often people got in touch – to say what they liked or didn’t like, had found helpful or not. It was not always a direct transition.   It wasn’t because you had called in  – heaven forbid !- but you had heard somebody to who you could relate and it clarified something for you.

At pains to reduce the amount of paper in the house, I can only do this when I can do it.   This is my past life I am shredding and as I worked I came on a folder with some of those contacts in it and the goodwill

rose like steam from the page.  And I had a belated insight into that past touched on in annalog/backwards and forwards.

Radio was for me, I was good at it – but without the callers and correspondents, I would never have shone as I did.  Forget podcasts – one way traffic – not discourse. So, dear Great British Public, thank you, thank you each and every one for exchange and time and knowledge and abiding pleasures.  Thank you for an enormous part of my life.  Your birthday too.