I usually write on Sunday.
I don’t know how this came about but although I have been known to write on Saturday or Monday, I think of Sunday as homework day. I send the copy and pictures to my “hands” who puts them up Tuesdays, occasionally a day later and on we go.
But I didn’t wake till 7.30. Can’t remember the last time I slept till such a time, not a glass of wine or a pill in sight. And the newspaper was as depressing today as the broadcast news yesterday.
I thought of a column called unposted – a letter to Nige and his crypto bankers ( yes, make the obvious joke), a note to the BBC about two segments of something watchable that then vanishes, every good thing being shown after 10.00 at night … but my interior life,
the life of the mind, the soul, the spirit has been gladdened this week and the positives make a better story .
A woman I only know professionally though it is obvious we share mutual respect has been led on and left in the dark by various cancer specialists, all of whom she sees through a famous insurer (ie privately, money hard earned) for 10 months. She said she was thinking of writing to her original specialist who was very good – I endorsed that. And added she must then confront the insurer.
What I did not expect was that she would send the letter to me saying she felt nervous, what did I think? I was an d am immensely honoured , trusted with such a confidence, replying positively at once.
The bus
yielded three wonderful encounters last week – one with a young woman working at a famous museum, the material of whose dress I admired (never lie) which led to a conversation up to what she did, how she got there (she referred to making history into a living – a wonderful phrase). I have invited her to supper, quite prepared to be rebuffed – I am not everybody’s taste.
A couple of days later I saw two girls – 17, not more. One blonde with dark blonde hair and slate blue eyes and the other dark and curly. As I rose to get off, I remarked on the blonde’s sweater – a slave to colour, me – same slate blue and prune stripes. In their acknowledgement, I picked up a slight accent so immediately asked – gently, nicely – where they were from? Israel they said. I speak two words of modern Hebrew called Ivrit and they mean welcome. They emerged spontaneously from my lips. They were so excited – “our language on a London bus!”
Two words to give such joy.
Going in to the second shopping trip, a young woman got on the bus – small, slender, hair the colour of conkers,
in biking leathers and hesitated though there was a seat next to me (perhaps there is an invisible warning sign ?) I patted the seat and said “Come and sit down, my goddaughter has hair the same colour as you and was teased about it at school years ago …”
Her face relaxed and we began to talk. She was German, her English was terrific. Why? She said” Oh, I am very interested in England and the English. I learned English at school and I just pushed on with it.” And are you studying, working? “No, no.” she said. “I just got on the bike and came to London.”
Everybody has a story, every body is a story. If like me you are the interlocuter, the initiator, you have to decide in a millisecond what to ask, whether to ask, whether to pass and I thought the best I could do for her was the simple interested kindness of a much older person.
So we talked about books and colours and when I rose to leave the bus, I said – sounding just like my own mother –“Now you take care on that darned bike, the roads are full of the don’t -care and take care of yourself generally. It was wonderful to meet you” to which she replied across the unbridged gap of touch “You are the best thing that has happened to me since I came” and I felt she was on more than one kind of journey.
Annalog 