Ponderings from a small English town.

  I head off for a swim, feeling a little time pressured as I have to be in Disley at 10 am, so I need to get to Coombs for 815. My five minute drive to coombs turns into 45 minutes. It’s an absolute nightmare, gridlock, and I can’t even get out of it. I didn't know that it was because of a major accident that closed the main road. at the same time. My doctors trying to ring me about something important. Talk about feeling stressed !!! When I get there, of course, I am late and they’ve all gone on ahead of me . When I see them, I am so relieved and shout out: 'I was stuck in a traffic jam, it was awful !!' I need sympathy, empathy and warmth. Instead a woman shushes me loudly!! and when I say, but it was really awful she says abrasively : stop shouting and I stand there in shock. This was not the welcoming warm empathetic response I was anticipating. What is wrong with people? I look at her stunned. She says: look it’s a really peaceful place so stop shouting! It Reminds

  I was given a lift by a stranger called Janet today to the walk that I went on. And four hours later I was talking about my son being estranged and somehow I got to talking to her and Jenny about my sons partner being working-class and she definitely has a chip on her shoulder about us as she sees us as Academic middle-class which we are. We talked about it and I was kind of teasing apart the different factors that have led to this difficulty with my son. This is towards the end of a three hour long walk where Janet has been dipping in and out of my conversation with a woman called Jenny Out of the blue Janet said : well you make assumptions because you invited me to come to Morocco next month not realising that some people might not have the money and might not have the work leave and on top of that you mention having a boat and you don’t realise it can be hard for people. the tone with which she said it indicated that there was some envy/jealousy there, and she couldn’t help her

 I think many of my posts will be on Friendship/Community.  So today I met up with three people I didn’t know - through the same Facebook group. As I walked in the first person called Debra was confrontational and aggressive in her tone, and I really couldn’t handle the way she was speaking, so I did try to tuning out the tone and the body language, and seeing if actually, she was saying things that were okay, Nope - they were still confrontational . For example, I suddenly realised I parked outside without my disabled badge on so I said scuse me - i’ve got to check my car andI run out for a moment to sort out my car. When I came back she asked me why I needed to do something with my car and so unhappily, I felt forced into admitting that I have a disabled badge, she made a strange harrumph and some weird body language. It later came out that she dislikes people having disable badges if they can walk at all. And so she challenges people if she can’t see invisible disability. !!!!