Jottings of a Traveller

Going back through my notebook, a great many of my scribblings appear to have taken place on buses, tubes, trains or planes. They are brief, just thoughts or observations, so I've gathered a few together in one blog.

14/7/09

On the top deck of the 76 bus en route to meet Mark Flunder in Waterloo. We're going to discuss our film project. We do this regularly - once every six year or so. The film will get made, one day, we just might not be the young future of cinema when it does. 

It's a beautiful day, bright sunshine, and I look down from my seat on the top deck as we pass St Paul's Cathedral. I look down on men in shirt sleeves and ties and women in tight skirts and high heels. Oh yes, I'd forgotten - people still work. Seven months since being made redundant, I feel totally detached from the notion that people have jobs to go to. 

We begin the day together, around 6.30 or 7; a cup of tea, radio 4, a shower, a cup of coffee and then the world goes to work whilst I climb eleven steps to sit a PC, for hours on end. I write, I have long since given up applying for jobs, I think, my mind wanders, I get distracted by the cat.

There's a lot of them, these workers. Except, of course, not one of them is doing any work. It is lunchtime. Some scurry with urgency, some meander like they're simply dazed and some have a crazed look of someone on autopilot. I wonder how many of them could give you a straight answer if you could asked them what they are up to. 

Some may have just been sacked, some just sacked someone else. Who knows? 

I wonder what do all of these people actually do? When they are back at their desks, I mean. It's a rhetorical question, I'm not interested, just noting my removal from what is considered a 'normal' life and slightly amazed that mankind has found ways of keeping all of these people occupied.

As we pass the Royal Courts of Justice, I notice a man outside in a baseball cap with a large placard. It reads: SAVE THE CHILDREN BAN TOBACCO & ACTORS SMOKING.

I think the thought I often come back to, that once upon a time we were all sat in a primary school classroom. None of us then knew what paths life would journey us along. 

Random, in its modern 21st century usage, just might be the word.

31/7/09

We're on a coach from the little Vasteras airport en route to Stockholm. It's my first visit to Sweden, or indeed Scandinavia, and as we reach the outskirts of the city, less than an hour after landing, a cement mixer drives past us. On the rear of this large vehicle in bold font is the name STIG GUSTAVSSON. I smile, I know for sure that I am now in Sweden.

This next piece isn't dated and I have no recollection of it but it sure warrants reproduction. According to my notebook the 'same guy wrote Smurf Song and Yes Sir I Can Boogie'.

I do hope that's true and not something I made up.

11/10/09

Returning from Sardinia I'm standing at the front of the aircraft near the toilets. I'm also near to  banks of metal boxes and a control panel of switches. This is a staff area, but on a plane, with space tight, there is no backstage privacy for the staff. Joe Public can see all that they're getting up to, if he's standing in the right place, by the toilets. 

I was just stretching my legs and hoping to catch some attendant's eye for a plastic cup of water, but I couldn't help noticing the little badges by the boxes and switches. Nice little decals, not stickers, but though they're on the tiny side of small, they still catch my eye. On each is a little silhouette of an aircraft with a single four-letter word on it. 

And the word on each of these nice little badges with its aircraft silhouette in the area where only the staff are meant to go is SELL.

More to follow. I need to go make some tea.