This is going to be a very short series of posts about people I have met. I often write about political problems and world problems and my problems and fictional problems but that doesn’t seem right. I realised recently how much more important these strange little meetings are than some of the things I write about so…
These are the People I Have Met.
Yesterday, I met a man called Reg on the bus. I was reading Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman’s new book and ohmyitisincredible) and eating cherries, while having a mental crisis about where to put the stones. I ended up swallowing them.
Reg got on the bus with a very jaunty walk and one of those lopsided smiles that invariably means ‘lovable rogue’. As he sat down next to me, he said “Happy new year!” and I, being engrossed in both book and stone dilemma, murmured it back with a smile.
After a while, Reg got a phone call. The phone call was clearly not making him happy and he started getting frustrated and telling the person on the other end that he had wasted his time or something to that effect. As he hung up, the lady sat on the row of chairs opposite told Reg that he was on the wrong bus. That pleased Reg because now he could talk (he wasn’t on the wrong bus). He talked to her for a while about how his friend was being disrespectful and then turned to me.
“I was trying to help him, you know?” I nodded. I didn’t know what I knew but I knew that Reg was sad and that wasn’t very good.
“He was supposed to meet me 45 minutes ago and now he wants to know where I am? He can come and find me.” I nodded again. Reg definitely sounded like he was in the right.
“But it is okay,” he continued, “because it is a new year.”
This puzzled me somewhat. I am not cynical at all and do believe in the power of change. I have to admit that a new year has never really sparked excitement in me. I don’t do new year’s resolutions and firmly believe that change occurs because you make something change. But Reg had other ideas and he has made me question my stance.
Reg told me that because it is a new year, he isn’t going to let people walk over him. Because it is a new year, he is going to make sure he takes care of things properly. He told me he was fifty and that means that he knows a lot of people. That makes it hard for him to make a change without a lot of people noticing/commenting/making it difficult. But he believed that the new year was a sign that he could do it. It gave him the power to change what he wanted to change because if he couldn’t do it now, when could he?
When he found out I was fresh back in London, he was lovely. He gave me his number and said if I wanted, we should go and drink coffee and he will show me his side of London.
I got off that bus grinning. I will meet Reg again.
The Beret Broadcast 