THOUGHTS FROM THE WAITING ROOM

I feel as though I am in the Waiting Room – in the time before activity or before our proposed journeys can begin, I am pacing round the room, looking out, watching the clock, ready for the off. There are walls and windows between me, and where I hope to be. There is excitement, a sitting on the edge of my seat feeling, so many things may yet be possible.

The Waiting Room itself could be a place of creative activity, convention dictates that the passenger must sit and wait, but other activities could take place in this ‘waiting’ space. It could also be seen as a space waiting for something to happen. I can see all the possible activities that could take place but I must sit on my hands for the time being, and wait. In this time of waiting, I’m taking the opportunity to make other sorts of journeys on different, pre-existing networks.

Out on winding country roads hardly a car wide navigating by ordinance survey map learning to look for landmarks – pylons cutting across the road and changing direction – seeing first the diagram on a map before the pylons appear in reality. Very little traffic, apart from the inevitable, impatient 4 by 4.

Cradled inside an old landscape of gnarled trees and bountiful fields, villages connected by many small roads that crisscross and intersect each other. Small wonders that can punctuate the day, a well- stocked gift shop, a recycled wool blanket at a bargain price, the impromptu cream tea in a tree shrouded car park.

Striding out on tow paths beside canals, walking along networks and systems, which were designed to transport all kinds of goods, routes cut into the landscape, engineered and manmade.

As with trains, these walks can afford a glimpse into the gardens and backyards of others, some well tended, some a blank canvass, others chaotic and uncared for.

Passing alongside once thriving industrial buildings, the landscape bearing traces of change, decay, renewal, the ghosts of problem solving, remnants of the places where networking systems met and moved on, leaving one mode defunct once a new form of transportation took it’s place.

Ghost on the Rails by MacCanonymous (You Tube link)