As university
draws to a close - how strange to write that - deadlines have
stepped up a notch.
So, in the interim period... I thought I’d pop another one
of last year’s columns for the Strathclyde Telegraph on here (p.s. This was the very first one I wrote):
♥
Something I’ve Noticed: Peripheral
People
(From the Strathclyde Telegraph. Issue 1. October 2011)
I try to live with my eyes wide open – partly
because walking about with closed eyes is kind of dangerous, but also I don’t
want to miss anything. I am a third year English and Creative Writing student,
and I’m looking forward to writing for you over the coming months. What can you
expect from this column? A collection of ‘noticings’: anything from overheard
conversations, to observations from the bizarre world of public transport. Hello,
friend, and happy reading!
I thought I’d start by telling you about the man
who walks past my house every day. He is stout with a rather gruff expression,
but what’s particularly fascinating about him is his hair: it is striped. A white
stripe runs from the back of his head down into his moustache, almost as though
someone painted it there. My sister spotted this soon after we moved. ‘It makes
him look a bit like a skunk, doesn’t it?’ We all peeked out the window, and - ‘Yes!’ - it really did! Since then, we have always (rather fondly) referred to him as ‘The
Skunk’.
I walked past him recently. He was on his
phone, and didn’t look up. As I was walking, it suddenly struck me how odd it
was. I have seen The Skunk nearly every day for the past thirteen years – I
have had conversations about him, I have worried that he’s ill when no one’s
seen him for a few days – and yet he probably doesn’t even know I exist. It’s
almost surreal to think how he has been going about his life for years, not
realising that he has somehow become a part of mine.
It made me wonder how many people’s stories we
all stumble into, unaware. Do people on my street notice me running like a
maniac – buttons bursting open, scarf unravelling – to catch the bus? They must:
I do it often enough. Maybe I have become part of their daily routine. (‘What’s
the time, Marge?’ ‘It must be nearly half nine, Phil. That strange girl just
ran past.’)
It’s easy, especially in the city, to feel
like we’re invisible – to feel insignificant in the midst of a crowd. It can be
frightening – mixed in among a-hundred other faces on a train – to feel like we
have lost ourselves, like we have become nothing more than passing shadows.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot, though,
about all the people who have quietly affected me. I don’t mean friends, or
even acquaintances. I mean the peripheral people – people like The Skunk, or the
couple in my work who always order white coffees, or the lady I saw once lifting
her little boy up to the post-box so he could pop the letters in.
I’m thinking about
people like the boy with the blue t-shirt last week who played the harmonica while crossing the road; he left music trailing behind him as he went. I'm thinking abut people like the old
man on my bus a few months ago who I overhead talking to the lady beside him. He
was telling her about his wife – about how she ‘made a great Shepherd’s Pie’,
and how she was from the Highlands, and how she was a ‘good lass’ – and he was
laughing. And then, his face suddenly fell and he became very quiet. And he
whispered in a hoarse voice: ‘I’ve lost her now – I’ve lost her.’ And even
though he wasn’t even talking to me, I found myself crying into my scarf.
All these
people – they make up the story that is my life. They may not be major
characters – I might not know their names, or even remember their faces – but
something about them, the essence of them, has stuck with me. Maybe my life wouldn’t
be dramatically different without them. But it wouldn’t be the same.
Our lives
are constantly overlapping. We might not realise the effect we’re
having on other people, but we do have an effect. We don’t pass though life unnoticed; we are
connected.
♥
(Pictures from: Will Freeborn - a Scottish artist. Quite a lot of these pictures are from familiar places)
