Just a coffee

For once, the traffic flows smoothly, and I get there far earlier than I’d expected.

So, with half an hour to kill, I park the car and head for the canal, taking the path past the gasometer and along by the hut where the sea cadets meet. I'm not sure I know what a sea cadet is, nor why they'd want to meet in a hut by the gasometer; it seems an awfully long way from the sea.

I side-step a cyclist, who’s pedalling head-down fast towards me, just before I shout out indignantly, I realise that I've strayed onto his designated half of the path. With a quick “sorry” I step back to my side of the lines and follow the route into the centre of town. Then, just like all the other people who find themselves too early for a meeting, I head for the nearest coffee shop.

I hadn't expected it to be quite this busy – it's not just time-whittlers like me, or workers grabbing a take-away on their journey into the office, there are people sitting down with breakfast and the papers, reading a book, glaring at the hard surface of a kindle while they sip at their coffee, or bite into jam-spread croissants. I wonder whether these people have jobs to get to, whether this is a regular stop on their way, or if this is the start of a different sort of day altogether – a prelude maybe to strolling round the shops, a pause to gather their thoughts before a big interview or a dreaded appointment, maybe even a venue for a secret assignation.

As I sit with my coffee, a woman comes in with a young child in a pushchair. What brings them out this early when they could be snuggled up at home? Perhaps this is a regular ritual before nursery, some time together before Mum goes to work. I think back, to when Megan was still at play-school;  I'd just started working in a Chartered Accountants' office, four mornings a week, five minutes from home. The time would fly past as I typed and filed, added up time-sheets and made cups of tea. I'd finish a few minutes before lunch and dash across the square to collect her. Even now, I can almost feel her small hand in mine, tugging at my arm as we’d head for home, saying “hot sossidge roll Mummy?” Then I’d nod and smile and we’d go to the bakers; it was never the healthiest lunch, but always the loveliest ritual.

Now, sitting in Starbucks, I wonder what it would be like to go somewhere for breakfast on a weekday. I know there’s nothing at all to stop me, I could do it any day if I really wanted to. But I don't. Instead, when I set off for work, my only thought is to get there as fast as I can. Everything else is just a distraction - the motorway congestion, the stop-start jams caused by school drop-offs,  I mark the journey in miles and minutes, calculating and re-calculating what time I'll arrive, what I'll do first when I get there. 

Thoughts of work send me reaching instinctively for my phone, and when I flip open the cover I realise it's almost time for my meeting, so I pull on my coat, tighten my scarf and sling my bag over my shoulder. I know that the day will still fly past; lost in a blur of meetings and decisions, e-mails and reports, I know it won't seem any time at all until I'm back in the car and heading for home. But as I manoeuvre my way past the pushchair and out of the coffee shop, I think I'd give almost anything to know my working day would end with a little girl holding my hand asking for a "hot sossidge roll." 

Soundtrack stories - Finlandia

I wonder how many of you listen to, or have at least heard of, Desert Island Discs? For anyone who hasn't, it's a radio show where famous guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, and they choose the eight pieces of music they'd like to take with them.

I'm glad to say I wasn't around when it first aired in 1942, but I've listened to it hundreds of times and played the game in my head almost as often. My choice of favourite tracks changes almost as often as the seasons and slightly less often than my moods, but there's one piece of music that has been in my top eight for at least the last ten years.

On the radio, people almost always choose, or perhaps feel obliged to select, at least one piece of classical music; apparently, the most popular is Beethoven's ninth symphony. I'm no different, except for me, there's not the tiniest sense of obligation, and it's not Beethoven I'd pick; the track I'd go for is Sibelius' Finlandia. I'd choose it because every time I listened to it I know I'd be taken away from the isolation and desperation of my desert island, and back to the astonishment and wonder of the first time I heard it performed.

Many years ago, I had a pretty dull job in a pretty fine organisation. There was nothing glamorous about my daily tasks - I filed, I typed, I managed databases and dealt with insurance claims, but my employers had a strong sense of history and a long presence in London. They owned a box at the Royal Albert Hall and for every single concert, any tickets that weren't wanted by the Governors, were made available to staff in a raffle. Once a month it was my job to organise that raffle and distribute the tickets amongst my colleagues. It was by far and away the most enjoyable task I've ever been employed to do. I loved the sense of anticipation as staff waited to see the list of winners posted up, and I loved the look of delight as I handed over the tickets to the lucky winners.

Some concerts were very popular and completely oversubscribed, but there were others, usually during the Proms season, when there was not enough interest to fill the box. One night there were several spare seats for a Proms programme that included Finlandia; I'd heard my Mum say it was one of her favourites so I decided to go along, but if I'm honest I wasn't expecting much. The last time I'd been to a classical concert had been with the school, when I'd yawned and fidgeted my way through the orchestra's best efforts in typical teenage boredom.

I don't remember now what else was on the programme that night, but I do remember looking down from my gilt-framed seat in the box, and wondering at the scale of it all - the number of musicians, the range of instruments, the row upon row of people listening intently as the music played and erupting into loud and enthusiastic applause when it ended. I couldn't pick out each of the instruments that leant its individual voice to the marvellous whole, but I remember sitting there as the music built and built, moving from bold, through calm, to triumphant.  And I can picture, even now, the huge kettle drums that pounded out the rhythm and emotion, that matched and lifted the beating of my heart.

Diversion

As I emerge blinking from the tunnel under the Thames, I realise I've allowed too much time for my journey. I've over-compensated for the usual slow crawl, that sees hundreds of cars filter through the toll booths into the tunnel like grains of sand through an egg-timer, and now I know I'll get there much too early.

Just as I'm thinking that I really don't want to hang around on my own at the training venue waiting for my colleagues to turn up, I see the sign for a service station just ahead. With a quick flick of the indicator and a twist of the wheel, I pull off the motorway and follow the road as it winds round and under the fast-flowing traffic.

It's further away than I'd expected, past the signs for the shopping centre, beyond a billboard boldly announcing the'ultimate karting experience'. As I turn in, the slip-road winds on and on until I'm almost convinced I've missed the car-park and I'll be spat back out onto the motorway, but then I see it, looming up out of the last remaining wisps of the early-morning mist.

The huge, white concrete slabs are incongruous against the wasteland and scrub. It's almost as though I'm reliving my childhood games in the garden and I've shrunk down to the size of my lego set. And, as I struggle to find the entrance, I wonder if, just like some of my lego creations, they've forgotten to put in a door.

Inside, it's almost empty, the only other customers are men. So many of them seem to be wearing the unofficial working-man's uniform of an over-sized navy sweatshirt and loose-bottomed jeans. I wonder how many of them actually have any connection with the logos emblazoned on their chests.

The high-pitched welcome of the girl behind the coffee counter is a strange sing-song contrast to the hum of deep male voices all around me. She works slowly and methodically, completing each order with care before starting the next. Even at this time, with so few people about, a queue starts to form. I take my coffee over to a table by the window. Everyone else is dotted around the edges of the room, as though in some sort of hidden code, they've all agreed they won't take the tables in the middle.

I look up across the room at the harsh flashing lights of the 'Lucky Coin' concession, where an array of slot machines and computer games shout silently across the space. I'm always surprised to see these machines, I can't quite fathom the mindset that makes people simply give away their money to a shiny metal monster; even now there's a navy-sweat-shirted man there, pressing the buttons, in desperation or unbridled optimism; either strikes me as sad.

In one corner is an old man, well past the age for the working-men's clothing, he's wearing a cord jacket and a tweed cap. 'A proper old man' I think, as I look across. At first I think he's asleep, then I see him turn the page of the huge large-print book propped up on the table in front of him. I quickly dismiss the unbidden thought and sense of relief that he's neither asleep nor dead. At this time of the day it's hard to think of a worse fate than dying alone and unnoticed in a motorway service station.

To my right is floor to ceiling glass. The clear panes are dotted with transfer images of coffee beans and costa cups; they look like a skein of geese flying across the sky. Outside the mist has cleared, and I realise that time is passing and I need to get on my way. As I pick up my coat and bag I glance out of the window, and I'm surprised to see a huge lake spread out behind the Lego, surrounded by trees and shrubs, with real birds flying across it. I'd had no idea it was there.

As I head back to my car and continue my journey, I'm glad to be reminded that there's so often another view, another world, just waiting to be seen.

Running out of role models

It was easy when I was young; I didn't need to work out who to be or how to behave, I just had to read a book.

It started with Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren's fiercely independent nine year old who lived in Villa Villekulla with a horse, a monkey and a suitcase full of gold coins. Who wouldn't want to be the girl with the strength to lift a horse, the imagination and determination to spend her days arranging adventures and telling outrageous stories? Pippi wasn't worried by her long thin legs, she wasn't in the least bothered that her nose was covered in freckles and she was positively proud of her hair in its two tight plaits that stuck straight out; so what could it possibly matter if someone called me skinny dripping, teased me for my freckles, or laughed at the way my carefully braided hair was looped across my head?

In time Pippi was followed by a succession of girls I might have been or could have been; the resourceful and rebellious Arrietty  from The Borrowers, the graceful and talented Posy from Ballet Shoes. As I grew, I found new characters to emulate, I built them into so much more than the typed letters on a page.

And then I found Elizabeth Bennett. My middle name is Elizabeth, I'm a second daughter; that was enough to grab my attention. When I found out she was intelligent, opinionated and favourite of her father's children, that was enough to keep me caught. Through her I defined my role as the sensible one in the family. I recognised my inclination to form an opinion too quickly, saw the implications of a judgement based on first impressions, learned the dangers of pride and prejudice.  I still mostly didn't get it right, but she helped me believe that mistakes could be overcome, that there were always second chances. And that kept me going for a long, long time.

But the trouble with Elizabeth Bennett is that she ceased growing up nearly two hundred years ago. She never got to be middle-aged; she didn't have to worry about what to do with greying hair and increasing girth. She married into a stately home, so what would she know about paying a mortgage into pension age, she never became a working mother or grandmother. I can't turn to her for advice on how to handle a re-structure at work; she can't tell me how to muddle through a long day in the office and still be half-awake and slightly interesting when I get home.

So I need a new role model; someone for this century and today's world; I just don't know where to find her. And for the first time in my life, books have let me down. I don't see any authors creating a positive pitch for the past-her-prime lady. I can't find the novel where it all turns out well for the woman who ought to know better by now; I've yet to read the story of the almost-invisible someone starting their second half-hundred; or the fable of the grown-up girl who is still trying to find out what to think and how to be.

I hope she's out there somewhere. Maybe she's just starting to come together, letter by letter, page by page. I'd love to think that one day I'll pop into a bookshop, pick up something that catches my eye, turn to the first page, and suddenly learn that there's another truth that's universally acknowledged.

After five o'clock

They arrive in a group just after five o’clock. If I walk through the lift lobby around that time, I see them gathered together, chatting away in a language I don’t recognise, though I guess it’s from somewhere towards the east of Europe.

They’re a mixed bunch; men and women, a range of ages, but they look pleased to see each other as they come together. It’s the end of my day, the start of theirs and I wonder what they’ve been doing since they went their separate ways last night. Maybe it's just having the same job and a shared language that brings them together, or perhaps there's something more; remembered histories, whispered secrets, common experiences or family ties.

I’m not very good at leaving work; there’s always just one more e-mail I could deal with, a paper to read for a meeting the next day, a new policy document I really ought to get my head round.  So I’m still at my desk when there’s a quiet knock and he pops his head round the door.

“ahh sorry” he says with a heavy accent, backing away quickly but grinning widely.

“Oh, I’m still working” I respond. Never quite sure how strong his English is, I gesticulate clumsily, waving an arm vaguely in the direction of the papers piled up on my desk, the bright computer screen blinking in the corner.

“I’m really sorry” I add, “I’ll be done soon”.

But he’s gone:  off to hoover the corridor outside. I hear him whistling over the hum of the vacuum.

I don’t know how to explain that I really am sorry. I know he’s got a job to do, that I’m getting in the way of him doing it, delaying the time when he can finish and go home. I don’t know where he lives, I’ve never asked him, but I imagine a small flat at the top of a converted Victorian house that’s seen better days. I picture him walking slowly up the steps to the front door, trying to open it quietly so he doesn’t wake the children.  I wonder if he complains to his wife about the stupid English lady who makes his work take longer. Or perhaps he shakes his head pityingly as he tells a tale of the sad woman who sits at her desk long after the others have gone home.

I carry on for a bit, trying to make some sense of my inbox in the vain hope that it will give me a better start the next day, but I’m tired, so it’s not long till I start to pack up. As I leave the office I look around for him, hoping to catch him and tell him the office is clear, I don’t want to leave him hanging around any longer than he has to or guessing when it’s safe to knock on the door again.

As I get to the stairs, he walks out of the kitchen.

“Good night” I call out, falsely cheerful, knowing I’ve still got a long drive ahead.

“Gooood night”. He says in return.  And then, slowly, articulating each word with the utmost care, he adds

“I hope you have a nice evening”

And I go down the stairs smiling.