I see it's a good people watching opportunity, and gives me a chance to observe those outside the station waiting to rendezvous. There is always hunger, desperation and frustration in their eyes. Some look expectantly from side to side like the Hamburgler approaching a BBQ, or a cat about to sneak up and steal your sausage.....
Others obsessively check their phone like a #hashtaghussy who has just uploaded the latest selfie. Then you have the ones who are slightly swaying from one foot to the other, correcting their hair and clothing; more self conscious than your 16 year old sister at her first real party, (eyeliner and alcopops n all!)
Whenever I wait outside a station or something I feel like I am some sort of secret agent waiting to either scope the place out, or blow the place up. One of the most awkward things about waiting or meeting someone at a specified landmark is when you see them approaching from about 50m away you wave, then have watch them walk toward you. What are you supposed to do?
Wave again? Keep waving? Start talking which would actually be yelling because you are still far away? Blow them a balloon animal and float it over to them to be your welcoming party?
I always feel like I should do a slow motion run like a star-crossed lover, or pretend to trip up, or as I am doing now, just continue to read the newspaper (which is providing me with warmth and also disguising me so that instead of a human I look like a giant paper mache, like the one I did in year five but that was a paper mache whale.....I'm sure the resemblence will be clear.)
I wasn't there, but I imagine that in ye olden days, before we send people a google maps dropped pin to tell them where to meet us, people were a lot more specfic about where, when and how they were going to meet up. If your mate was late, you wait. But your mate was less likely to be late because they would navigate the place you state to collaborate and conversate.
Instead of txts like "I'm going out tonight, come, txt me when you are here I'll tell you where I am"
People would have communicated with ye olde letters with the brown edges like the ones you also made at school by staining them with tea or coffee and burning them a bit, yeah those ones, and would have looked like this "I shalt be waiting at ye tea rooms at 2 of the clock three Thursdays from henceforth. Please meet me there at the back table to the right of the fire place and we can thusly parambulate around the town until the cock crows five."
No way would those plans be able to be cancelled in a hurry coz by the time you cut down the tree and pummel the bark to make paper to let them know you can't come coz you are washing your hair that day, you might as well go (I reckon this explans some of ye olde hair styles, peeps kept making appointments on hair washing days. That and ye olden days people washed their hair with beer and stuff)
Edward Verrall Lucas said
“I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.”
Speaking of jolly..here comes my mate now (who has txt me about 3 times updating his location and reasons for being late) so time for me to escape my paper palace, smashe out of the mache, hear the explaination for the delay-tion and keep my assets safe.
Jj
