Look, Up In The Sky

I’m a fairly oblivious commuter. When I’m walking around, my ears are budded and fill of the sounds of podcasts, audio plays or music. I could have (and almost have) walked past family members once I’m locked inside. Similarly, when I’m on the train, my eyes are engaged in either reading or attempting to stay open to read*. I have on some rare occasions even failed to notice that we’re at the last stop if I’m fully engrossed. So I did something that I never normally do - I looked out of the window.

As I looked out of the window, I noticed for the first time in many years of travelling that the station we were stopped is directly under a flight path and that planes were coming in pretty close overhead. As I watched the plane coming in on its approach for landing, the train started to move and I had the odd sensation that the plane was frozen overhead, just suspended and hovering in mid-air. It gave me the slightly disconcerting feeling that it could just drop straight down out of the sky at any moment. The strangeness of the scene was compounded by a criss-crossing pattern of contrails from other planes forming a sort of latticework in the sky behind it. And then we passed under something and the moment was broken.

Am I going with the possibly slightly trite message that sometimes we should look and see what’s going on in the world around us a bit more? It’s certainly not something I’m above closing with, in a sort of Jerry Springer, “be good to yourselves and each other” kind of a way. It’s far more likely that this was just an excuse for some rambly footnotes. though.


* Yep, I’m one of those commuters who does the head constantly nodding forward and back accompanied by the occasional start and possible snorting noise. It is suave, sophisticated and sexy (what do you mean, “snotty, snorty and sickening”?)**

** On a separate note, this only happens on the shorter commuting journeys. Stick me on an intercity train and I can't drift off even if I try. I don’t what it is about these - the noise, the speed, the jolting around - but I just can’t sleep on them. Shame really as that would be a good couple of hours kip.***

*** I was tempted to add another footnote here but that’s just getting a bit silly, don’t you think?****

**** Or is it? Could I write a whole post that’s entirely composed of diversions?+ Let’s face it, that’s how my mind works most of the time. It’ll start off on one track and then, before I know it, it’s gone down three different tracks and ended up somewhere completely different. Anyway, I think I’ve digressed slightly...

+ I mean, I could but who’s going to read that? Well, aside from you obviously. Look, this is probably getting a little bit out of hand. I’ll let you get back to the previous diversion before getting back to the main thread, whatever the hell that was anyway.