Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-06-30 18:36:56 - Graham Ellis
The woman sitting next to dad is worried about tomorrow's meeting now that Emily has had to pull out ... she wonders if Lucinda can go on her own and how that can be turned to her advantage. She left a curry in the bottom of the fridge, but is having her son check to make sure that it doesn't have cashews in it by carefully going through the ingredients. And she wants to be sure that he's going to be doing school work while it heats up, and before she gets home. He came second in today's singing competition, but it seems rather less well in the sports - but "it's the taking part that's important".
Only one carriage on the National Express train from London King's Cross to York (and on to Edinburgh) was designated a "quiet carriage", and judging by the number of people using their mobiles, that's about the right ratio. Dad and I sat there, hot and sweaty (the train was an old "125" with the air conditioning our of action in some carriages, and the people packed in to the remaining ones).
I used to treasure travel time as a time to regroup, to think, to make notes, to learn. And not really a mobile communications centre. I suppose I still do ... I used National Express's Wifi to check in briefly, then learned about my fellow passengers, as you can see from above. Was I snooping on them? Hardly - I couldn't but help learn all these things - there were no ear plugs provided at our seat, and certain speakers can probably penetrate ear plugs anyway.