All entries for Monday 29 October 2007
October 29, 2007
Monday, Around Lunchtime.
Alarm clock, brush my teeth. Shower, getting dressed. Breakfast, leave the house. Bank. Post office.
Library, book renewed. Up the stairs, down the stairs. To a seminar. More flights of stairs. Seminar: sit, sit, sit.
Library, to get reading out for next seminar. Towards home.
And then I pass the little garden in front of the Modern Records Centre, you know, that place where BP left their papers. A little triangular piece of field, hardly noticed. Three or four benches are placed in the grass, only metres from the path. A sculpture (see image) in the middle. One large, friendly looking oak tree across the path, roofing a few metres of the way as I walk along. A tree you would want to hug, or climb into (you know it would welcome you), either way, a tree that makes you feel a safe child as you walk past it.
Then I see a person sitting there in the sun, on the bench I mean. In itself that’s nothing special, and the person also doesn’t look particularly noteworthy. Warwick society hoody, jeans that are not exactly his size. And yet there’s something about his colourlessness, that captivates me for just an instance. It’s peaceful. He sits still, unmoving, hands loosely on his lap, just staring around a bit. Probably not thinking anything grandiose nor anything troubling, just sitting there.
So I wonder to myself: when would I just sit on a bench, in the sun, alone? No mobile phone to pester me, no book I should have read by yesterday. Not even a sandwich to munch, just sitting. And I don’t know. I walk on to go have lunch at home, read and send text messages.