The London Loaf: Delay
Annalie continues her column The London Loaf:
Delay is an interesting concept. We spend our lives rushing from one place to another, and when we arrive, panting, at the point of departure, we find ourselves with a great big wadge of time to kill.
I’m sitting in the airport now having finally managed to score the only available notebook from the dismal array of shops at Terminal 4. Alarming that writing by hand with a pen is considered so out of fashion as to be served by a solitary spiral pad left to rot on a dusty, out of reach shelf in WHSmith. Besides, it’s tiny, and my writing, as has been noted, belongs in a doctor’s surgery.
Suddenly, time switches its focus. Instead of not having enough, I’ve got too much, so I’m trying to make things last longer instead of trying to get through them. I was lucky with the notebook mission, I’ve been to Boots (twice), had a few goes on the moving walkway – which was surprisingly bouncy, incidentally – now what?
Coffee, of course.
I’ve often cringed at the phrase “people-watching” – perhaps because it brings back memories of scruffy-haired boys at school trying to impress girls by being all aloof and philosophical (at the same time cultivating a clever excuse to stare at them.) But there are certain patterns of behaviour I see others doing or find myself doing that make me smile, because deep down we are all the same.
The little deceptions we practise on ourselves, for instance – the women who order a skinny latte and then balance it out with a calorie-laden blueberry muffin; the diet coke and large fries syndrome. My own version of this is to work on the principle that broken biscuits don’t count, cake doesn’t make you fat if it’s on someone else’s plate, and anything with fruit in the title is healthy.
I catch myself picking up my coffee and sipping it as the waitress walks past, in case she swipes it away despite the fact that it’s almost full; it’s a split-second impulse to protect my property – swiftly followed by a feeling of shame at being so neurotic and grasping.
As humans we are often in a mess because we have these instincts but are bewildered by them, embarrassed or unable to admit them at all. Most of the time I catch my inner monologue huffing away at someone for taking up two seats on the train or shouting and laughing hysterically on a mobile phone – and then I catch myself doing the exact same thing and justifying it defensively to an imaginary audience.
Amazing really that there are so many of us, humans – and we all think we are different – the main character in this feature film called life – the centre of the universe. It can be a relief sometimes to admit we aren’t perfect, and to cut other people a bit of slack as well. After a few minutes of sitting in Costa coffee I too am an armchair philosopher, ready to embrace the world with an unconditional
empathy – at least until the next threat to my ego arises…
Annalie Wilson
www.annalie.co.uk/
Read more of The London Loaf.
Image by larskflem.
