Scenes from a bus

Public transport.  It’s a marvellous thing for writing inspiration, or even just a little entertainment at the end of a working day.  Sights from today’s bus ride home:

A Goth at a bus stop with black gloves with a skeleton pattern on the backs of the hands.  As I tend to sit upstairs, I got the bird’s eye view, which included seeing a skeletal hand holding an apple…very Snow White?

Person sitting in front of me on the bus at one point, who had a fur trim to the hood of her coat, which matched the colours in her hair ie salt and pepper dark hair.  It made me feel quite positive about the greying process to come, if you can make it seem like a fashion statement…

It’s all about perspective really.  Left to my own devices, all too easy to climb inside my head, as it were, which can be a dark and not particularly cheerful place to be.  (Particularly in the mornings on the way to work, when it’s not that much lighter outside.)  But a bit of distraction is a good thing – we don’t grow out of the need once we’ve passed the stage of toddlerdom, it seems to me.

Equally, meeting with friends in cell group yesterday always brings perspective.  Even though we’d not seen each other for just a couple of weeks, there seemed to be plenty to catch up on.

The morning papers at work fulfil a similar function.  Yesterday’s G2 main article covered the issues of organ donation through very moving interviews with various people involved with the procedure in some way, from the parent of the child who donated his liver, to the man who received it, and the nurse who put the two together etc.

However grouchy I may feel at students doing not doing what they should abroad, it’s a salutory reminder that I am not being asked to face the same level of difficulty in my life just now.

Of course, these various scenes, snapshots of others’ lives, are not just for my benefit.  But I can choose to keep my eyes open to them – and remind myself to have eyes to see, where God has something to show me.

Tons of fun

Not quite the ton (that really would have been scary), but I reached national speed limit type velocity today on the A1.  What’s more, both I and other drivers lived to tell the tale.  (Mind you, you would hope so, with the driving instructor next to me.)

Driving lessons continue, and today included driving in the dark – though heading back into Edinburgh through an amazing sunset first.  Doing 50 on the old A1, not many other cars about, you get the feeling that you might just be able to do this…or so I hope.

The really scary part will be getting in a car on my own, and going from A to B.  (Not to mention actually owning a car…Perhaps I really should have done this in my teens instead, when optimism might have outweighed natural wariness a bit more.)

I now take very seriously how people talk about getting tired doing motorway driving, as I certainly was tired heading back.  But overtaking lorries seems a little more familiar now, though having a bus overtake me on the inside lane of dual carriageway on the way back into town was less helpful.  Particularly when he’d parked somewhere silly outside Haddington earlier on in the journey.

I am doing other things than driving, but when the driving goes OK, it seems a bit more noteworthy.  Maybe a different topic next time.

Two revs forward, one rev…

I am trying to remind myself that learning is incremental, and that you don’t always move forwards.  (Especially when you’ve tried reversing into parking bays for the first time.)

Interest rates can go down as well as up, as well we know.  But it’s frustrating when you’ve a limited chunk of time booked for driving lessons to start me off again.

Still, there are some good things – building up familiarity with roads I know I will need to use locally, gradually learning I don’t have to change down gear by gear every time I approach a queue of traffic.

The sun has shone pretty much all week so far, which helps.  I have survived driving roads which I worry about, like Sir Harry Lauder Road, and my roundabouts are improving a bit.  I have even discovered what electric wing mirrors are for – only to be aware that I won’t have them in the car I’ll get to drive.

Was reading yesterday about kids’ behaviour deteriorating just before they master a big developmental change.  Maybe I can claim the same, and some smoother driving is just around the corner…

 

It’s a gas gas gas

But can you name the tune the words come from?

I am having refresher driving lessons.  Fifteen and a half years on from stunning my mother with my ability to pass my driving test (she took me out to lunch on the strength of it), I am actually behind the wheel again – and so far, actually quite good.

So, I can change up gears (changing down not as good), brake going into bends and accelerate coming out of them, and actually start to believe my driving instructor that I can do more in higher gears than I thought.

I can also go over speed bumps…a necessity where I live.  And I even got to practise putting fuel into a car for the first time.

Driving is definitely in the ‘feel the fear…’ category, but as it is moving into the ‘feel the need…’ category more, I think I might finally have incentives for keeping going.  Even the fact that I am not back to complete beginner status is a boost to the ego.

The strange thing is being able to drive through areas that feel busy, because there’s someone at my elbow to tell me what to do.  My bus journeys in the morning are a bit more interesting now, because I am even trying to read the road ahead, as though I were driving.  (The only down side is, every time I think we should be changing up a gear, we pull into a bus stop.  Obvious limitations with this form of virtual driving.)

I’m not even going to think about how many million lifts I owe in lieu of how many I’ve been given over the years.  But at least some of them have been paid in cake or other foodstuffs, I reckon.  And for those friends who live outside of the reaches of Lothian Buses, I might even be able to visit you.  Not immediately, but a lot sooner than walking over, anyway.

Dan pointed out that we missed our window of opportunity to drive when fuel was cheaper.  My inner Scot/Yorkshirewoman is going to be terrified by the cost of it all.  But little by little, we’ll get there.

Milly Molly Mandy strikes back

Honest, it started as a book review, it is in no way intended to comment on any cabinet reshuffle…

Spent some pleasant time with G and S over yesterday afternoon/evening and this morning, and discovered that one of the books in S’s recent acquisitions for her girls is Milly Molly Mandy.

For the uninitiated, Milly Molly Mandy is, as you can probably tell, very much a book that girls get to read at a youngish age.  It fits in quite well around the Enid Blyton type stage.

MMM (as I will now refer to her) lives in a little white cottage with a thatched roof, and has a series of shops at her disposal in the village.  For added interest, there is a map of her village in the front of the book, to help you picture it for yourself.

I enjoyed MMM when younger, though to be honest any books that came within range were devoured from c. 6 onwards. Looking back it it, I realised I had to do a bit of explaining for J, my story time listener.  Some of it is long changed: one of her friend wants to be a nurse, ‘with a hat with long white streamers’.

Some of it seems up to date again: MMM helps her friend’s dad repaint a garden roller and a water butt.  It won’t be so long until thatched roofs are back in, surely?

But after all, MMM speaks to all kids who want routine plus a little excitement. MMM has a group of friends, and they all talk about what they want to do when they’re grown up.

MMM gets to mind one of the shops for an hour, and decides that, although she’d like to work in that kind of shop in the future, an hour is enough for now.

No one is talking of three day weeks just yet, as their economic strategy for surviving the recession, but perhaps an hour of work here or there, that you could happily stop when the owner came back, does sound attractive…

In these dark days, I do commend to you another childhood pastime which does well in adulthood: making up sequel titles with a given phrase.  Perhaps it’s time to write “Milly Molly Mandy goes to Hollywood”, that long undiscovered follow up…