waiting rooms and connectivity

Today, during my Mantle Street Memories on Mondays stint at The Old Sale Rooms, I met with an interesting man who recalled rag rug making with his parents as a boy growing up in Kent. 'Everybody did it' he said.

‘But not everybody wants to remember, there’s a stigma for some?’ I suggested.

'In those days’, he said, ‘people knew how to mend things and make things, it’s what people did, almost regardless of class'.  His father had been a solicitor’s clerk - but he could still mend their shoes for example.

Then somehow, I can't remember how, we veered into subject of transport. I told him that I didn’t drive, nor did I want to - I managed. 'Ah', he said, nodding his head, 'that’s what people who don’t drive do: they "manage".'

I didn't mean that I 'just' manage. I didn't mean to use the word 'manage' in a pejorative, passive sense. And I didn't mean 'manage' as in 'pain management'. Why, we bus users might even sometimes invest something of ourselves into our journeys and indeed - claim at least some sort of share in the ownership of our public transport experiences! For all the apparent re-appreciation of the value of slow travel, I think most non users of public transport would cite  lack of ‘connectivity’ as one of the reasons for opting out.

One bus driver has recently explained to me, that timetables are only meant to be a 'guide' to services. I think that once this is understood and accepted, full faith is pretty instantly restored. For any belief system worth credence, has parameters, qualified and substantiated by material experience. In my book, heavy traffic, bad weather are acceptable material reasons for the lateness of buses, why shouldn't they be? My faith in the service, demands that I should not be unreasonable.

And anyway, there are waiting rooms in which to wait together and there is something to be said for waiting on something.  
 

How about this for connectivity:-

In the waiting room at the bus station last week, a man with learning difficulties makes a call on his mobile. His voice is very loud and the details of his ‘private’ conversation are broadcast to all waiting passengers without discrimination.

But first a brief, sad preamble to this tale; I might mention that I once had to endure an interminably long bus ride on a crowded bus, sitting next to a young woman who was on the phone briefing her solicitor on the expenses she would like to claim for a cosmetic enlargement gone wrong. We shouldn’t have heard it and her lack of boundaries was saddening. I was shocked. Felt assaulted even, but also very sad for her.

However, last week was different. Picture (in the waiting room on the day I mention) all those present gathered together in a wholly different way. For this man's apparent lack of social inhibition is disarming and when he calls off and looks up and sees about him a room of slightly embarrassed smiling faces, he apologises, explaining that the background noise at the other end made it difficult to hear... Then he invites us for feedback on the particular predicament that his phone conversation has just brought to our attention! People are sympathetic, several offer their own take on his situation.  Soon he is standing in the centre of the waiting room, commanding it like a stage. He is humorous, he cracks jokes and we are laughing with him. And then - too suddenly - he leaves for his bus and the woman who exits after him announces to us before closing the door: ‘you have just been entertained by "our" H…..'

And if this is a room for waiting, this was worth waiting for.  For this was, is, ‘connectivity’. Shared humanity that can be experienced on a bus route, or at a bus station near you, any day of the week...



(Rag rugs and public transport? What's the connection? Answers in my next post. Or on a postcard please.)