Thursday, 30 April 2009

Today, my car was checked over by a garage in Hitchin that specialises in Japanese vehicles. After visiting my sister, I spent some hours working at Hitchin library and then visited the museum where I met a young man of about twenty years. Stuart had a minor learning difficulty or condition that was manifest in torrents of questions, each replaced by a new question immediately I started offering an answer to the first. But we soon enough overcame this and I found Stuart was extremely pleasant and knowledgeable. We spent an hour or so together at the museum and chatting over a coffee before the garage called to say my car was fixed.

We might occasionally exchange a nod with a fellow shopper. We meet new work colleagues and neighbours, or new people at our pubs and clubs. We might have a cursory conversation with a fellow passenger on a train. But in real life, we do not spend time getting to know random strangers. I suppose this is down to the pressures of time and social mores: what people might say or what people might do. Rather like jumble sales and afternoon tea, idling away time with a complete stranger is a very enriching feature of civilized life that we are in danger of losing completely.

In the evening, Jackie and I had great fun re-joining our folk dancing club after a few weeks absence.

Incidentally, my car wasn't fixed at all - the little engine warning light still comes on for two random journeys out of three.