These items are by no means a luxury. Hot, sweet coffee accompanied by biscuits or sandwiches have become an essential component of such pleasure outings. Their omission caused considerable distress, since one must then decide whether the £2.90 one would have to spend on coffee would be well spent. Obviously it would not, since even at the Oxfam bookshop, few books of quality are priced below £2.00.
The matter then becomes a choice between book and coffee. The book will always win in this unequal contest, since a book can be read over and over, coffee must be drunk before it gets cold! So today I bought a paperback that caught my eye, entitled 'Writing a Spiritual Journal". for £1.99 and wandered back to Bus Stop No. 10 on the main thoroughfare through the city, where I would catch my bus home. (This after a brief wander about the town centre, gawking in disbelief at the cost of notebooks, the size of a slim pocket, selling at £6 purely because - as far as I could see - of its moleskin binding.)
At Stop 10 I sat on a bench near the edge of the street and regarded with nothing more than mild interest the slow stop/start progress of traffic almost nose-to-tail, and marvelling at the restraint and courtesy of drivers in this very civilized community. Perhaps the fact that it was a sunny spring day had something to do with it, but no driver, at any time in the afternoon, sounded his horn.
St. Albans' main thoroughfare is narrow, due to the layout of the town having been established long before the days of the motor car. Traffic lights keep the progress of vehicles of any size in any direction to either a slow crawl or a stop. No-one seemed to mind. An enormous dark blue pantechnicon stopped in front of me, the whole of its monstrous side covered by a vivid painting of a knight in full armour astride a furiously determined white horse, charging with lance levelled at the traffic ahead. Underneath the galloping hooves a banner bore the proud legend: "Knights of Old - Service with Honour". The whole display seemed right and fitting in this old town of history, sanctity and bloodshed for a worthy cause - until I saw painted on the door of the cab the firm's address, in Northampton. It stopped, with the rest of the traffic, opposite me as I sat on the bench, about three yards away, the comfortable grunting of its exhaust probably belching forth any amount of toxic, invisible gases.
A lady of formidable proportions, her considerable bulk accentuated by multiple layers of warm clothing - there is a chill, challenging breeze despite the warm sun - approaches from behind me, pushing a species of four-wheeled, upright trolley, from which three small, vividly coloured toy monkey-like creatures dangled, suspended on short elastic bands, jiggling gently, two of them wide-eyed with excited wonder, the third doleful, apprehensive, expecting the worst. The good lady makes her way with a slow, rolling, purposeful gait to the far end of the bench, commences to unload from her trolley more than a few carrier-bags, crammed with supermarket groceries, on to the bench. Bags of 2kg sugar, at least four of them, were stood together on the rough tarmac surface of the street. Something else in moderately-sized cartons also formed their own pile. She blockaded her position on the bench with a stockade of groceries. Then a little tower of cartons feel outward, spreading themselves in random disorder. She ignored them, went on unpacking. It would require, I surmised, no small amount of effort on her part to get up from her seat, clear a way through the barricade of jumbled tins, boxes, packets, bottles, to retrieve the fallen cartons. I did the gentlemanly thing, salvaged them for her. "Thank you very much," she said. I am sure she meant it, but the flat absence of any emotion in her voice discouraged further communication or even eye contact, and the opening for just a smile or simple conversation-opener along the lines of "weekly groceries" was gone. I returned to the book from Oxfam, she continued to busy herself with re-arranging her purchases, discarding the carry-bags, packing the articles sensibly and efficiently into her trolley, heavy sugar bags at the bottom, lighter items placed compactly on top, maximizing the use of space. I went back to my book. Surprisingly quickly everything was satisfactorily arranged in her trolley, the cover battened down, and she sat back to enjoy a cigarette. The wind was blowing my way as she exhaled. I pretended not to notice. Soon she got up and went away.
Was this an opportunity missed to share our common humanity? Is advanced age - full three-score years and ten - and the sensitivities that go with it, in combination with a white beard, wrinkles, unsupple joints, slowness of intellect and faulty diction no excuse, no reason even, to be hesitant about making the first moves toward communication? Maybe not, but they don't make it any easier either. So there lumbered off, out of my life, in a lingering whiff of tobacco smoke, another stranger who might well have been the legendary friend I do not know.
Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir
Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife (UK)
by guest blogger: Brian Murgatroyd
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