COMMITTEE ROOM NO 9.
“And don’t get back on” Shouted the ticket man at the two teenage girls who he had just chucked off the train for not buying their tickets. He tapped on the drivers door, asking him to keep all the doors open while he made sure to get them out of the carriage they had just re-joined further down.
At Dumbarton I stared at my reflection in the window; took a photo of it for the photography project at Jeans Bothy and decided it was a pretty boring one though I did like the splash of blue of my mask.
In the station at Cardross the ticket lady had told me that I would need to be very nice indeed to Wendy if she finished the Kilt walk tomorrow and I had nodded in an anxious way but did see that in the bookcase of free books, there was a novel by Sally Rooney so, while wondering whether to tell Wendy about the agony her feet were likely to be in, I read my new book as we rattled along to Glasgow.
When we got to Hyndeland , I saw the same two teenagers anxiously calling down to each other along the platform, presumably working out how to carry on avoiding the conductor. It made me smile and wonder if Wendy had ever done things like that as a child.
In George Square there was a protest about something or other, they wanted justice for someone I had never heard of. I liked the music they were playing and found the Committee Rooms.
This would have been a culture shock even before covid; packed with huge TV screens and a babble of unmasked noise and bodies jammed against each other.
Luckily my colleagues were in a corner at a big table and luckily, I worked out I was meant to be contributing to a kitty and that someone else went to the bar for the drinks; not me.
I spent the next two hours, grinning and grimacing when it seemed to be appropriate; cupped my hand to my ears in a questioning way numerous times. I drank my beer, had some real live conversations and left early, before I was tempted to drink far too much and be incapable of giving Wendy and her friends a lift into Glasgow the next day.
Back at the ticket office in Queens Street I attempted to buy a ticket to visit my mum in a couple of weeks time. However I don’t think the staff member understood my accent as she said the shortest journey would take me 13 hours and might not leave anyway. I gave up and decided to ask Wendy to help me on-line that evening.
On the way home to Wendy I remembered our group in the Bothy; the lovely coloured table with shortbread on it, Katrina giving us coffee, Kath showing us stunning books of her writing and photographs that she had made herself; Janet being scandalised at the theme of my new project, which to her relief, turned out to be nothing much more than a picture of a shoe in the mud! I remembered lightness, warmth, laughter, jokes. I realised that the Bothy had eased me back into something better. That when I go there I look forward to who I might meet and if I am in a good mood might witter without worrying I will make a fool of myself.
I smiled at the too brief day; wondered what I would tell Wendy when I came home from my first day of non-lockdown normality; decided I was old enough to avoid noisy crowded pubs but maybe also old enough to speak to people without wildly wondering how weird my conversation might appear to others, decided to believe some people might like my company; thanked Jean’s Bothy again for that.
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