in my imagination

Life It’s been one week since I began walking to work and as predicted, the trip is becoming progressively easier, my legs aching less, and the space between the two points seems shorter, or at least that’s the perception. As I slowly meandering along catching up on my backlog of This American Life podasts, I’m closed off from the world, probably looking a sight in the big green coat I’m wearing to keep the cold out, as I chuckle to myself when Ira Glass or one of the other contributors says something funny.

But people seem to be increasingly unaware of each other in general. On the bus home (because you want to get home from work more quickly than you want to get there), as we rounded the corner at the top of Hardman Street I glanced out of the window near the Eatwell food kiosk and noticed a man (at least I assume it was a man) lying on the floor across the pavement.

We were going too fast for me to see if he was alive or dead or even in my imagination taking a photograph of the bottom of the wall, but I could see that some of the pedestrians weren’t just walking around the obstruction but actually stepping over him/her. This concerns me. If by some remote chance I did keel over in the cold somewhere on Croxteth Drive, I’d want someone to at least check that I was ok as they went about their business. They would, wouldn’t they?

2 comments:

Laura Davis said...

My sister once stopped to help a man who had collapsed on a London street. Commuters were stepping over him in their hurry to get to work, presumably assuming he was drunk. She stopped, took his pulse and called an ambulance. Turned out he had fallen into a diabetic coma and she had saved his life. Sad state of affairs but at least it only takes one person out of hundreds to stop and make sure you are okay. Laura

Stuart Ian Burns said...

Well done her. I suppose I'll never find out what happened to this bloke.