Killing Time

Friday is filled with rain.
 It's the kind of rain that falls in thick, never ending streams. 

It feels serious.
So, a walk around the museum to wander around the collected past of my town and other parts of the world.
I decide that today is a day for the art world, so I make my way to the top floor. I'm in the mood for  still life , abstraction and the visions of  those who can capture the often unseen in life.
I'm in the mood for quiet contemplation on the imagery and meaning held within the gilt frames and shaped materials on display.

 What I forget is that it's Easter holidays.

I forget that places like this will be the haunt of the bedraggled parent and grandparent.
 The kingdom of the displeased and unquiet child. Sure enough, my first ten minutes are an unexpected insight in to the workings of parent and child relations. Sobs, squarks, runnings about to name but a few some of the activities going on around me. Couple that with wanton disobedience and  that thing that kids do when you get more than two in the same place; they turn into pinballs in a big pinball machine. All over the place with enviable freedom. This secretly delights me. Not because I especially enjoy watching children run about, no. It's for different reasons. One, they're not my children and two, there's something in watching sensible and responsible adults trying to impose their attitudes on little four year old  pinballs of I don't care.
The game goes on until someone tilts it.

I stand in the middle of this like the uncle who's got no kids but has  been dragged along to share in the joys of it all.

Eventually, the shepherds somehow gather their flock together and herd them off to bother the the Ancient Britons downstairs.

I drift into ceramics only to be confronted  with another cohort of small voice boxes. These, however, are in a different situation. As the others were free to roam, these are on the school trip. Like tiny offenders on community service, they wear fluorescent waistcoats and  are guarded by young women who do the responsible adult thing but have hairstyles that want me to know they are fun people really.

 Prisoners already kids. 

They drift around the 17th Century table ware displays like an unsteady dayglo knee high cloud amid the oohs and ahhhs of the captors. The cloud slowly dissipates and I am ,for the last five minutes, left pretty much alone. 

As I make my way back down the stairs, I catch up with two of the straggling mini convicts and one unlucky  guard , left behind to assist in the tackling of the stairs. One of them informs me that he is  a"big boy " for walking down the stairs , his screw informs me that she is "sorry" that it's taking so long. I inform both that it's ok because, it is.

Out into the steady downpour again, I make my way back to my own prisoners who await my rfeturn. Their crimes? Not understanding the inferred and how to use  the apostrophe correctly.

Their sentence.....Life

Hello and welcome to....

Being somewhere else..
The glamour of the time away from home falls short when twinned with waste land just off the M1.

The actuality of the small kettle and tray of tea bags hits home when you really are making it just for one.
Overheard conversations being held by salesmen who've travelled the length of the country and wandered through the great invisible North South divide. No glamour there either, just massive amounts of relief that it wasn't me.

An induction into the new and the obligatory tell us all about you team builder thing. Here I am, amongst real grown ups who have job goals! What do I do?
I am honest, refreshingly so. After being told that others enjoy the wonders of F1 and various sports, I am compelled to let out that I enjoy looking at the stars, thinking, daydreaming and occasionally writing something. I curse myself at one point for not giving away the secret that I also enjoy gaming, on my , in the dark mostly and never online. I should have put the lid on the tin and given away that I also enjoy sometimes walking up hills with my friends. They may have sent me home at that point with the wails of their mistake made ringing in my ears. 
I couldn't help thinking about the room we were in. How many other inductions and private functions had it seen?How many speeches and first dances had taken place in it? These places all seem to be built using some identical plan, some duplicate brick and interior layout.
Later, I ring home and explain about the day and the feeling of  detachment. It is echoed through the ether.
Food time and I'm with some nice folks. I do the talking thing but eventually I start listening to them talking to each other and the wondering kicks in. Who are these people and what do they want from all this? What was their reason for jumping ship? That's how I want to ask, just as that, why did you desert the flaming wreck of your previous role? Maybe they didn't. Maybe they had some conscious  reason for moving up the ladder rather than the feeling that they should be somewhere else now. Perhaps I read too much into people. Perhaps they're  just as lost as I feel in some of these situations.

Eventually, it's back to the massive bed ,another one cup tea bag adventure and my book. I talk to my wife again and suddenly, as I look through the window, I catch sight of the sprawl that is Sheffield, falling down the hill like a bed of low scattered embers. There's magic again and the everyday gives up its beauty under the glow of sodium. 

In all of this, I think I somehow get closer to where I'm actually supposed to be, where my unseen pull is eventually going to lead me. It takes time and there's much to be thankful for in the meantime. Not least this.

Colours, values and names change but underneath, it's still all about working with the uncertain and the unpredictable. Even if it involves hotels on reclaimed wasteland, just off the M1.