As the poet said,
“What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare?”
So rather than fill my blog spot this week with some worthy words about the psychology of motivation to learn, I’d like to share with you instead these words I wrote a few months ago following an amazing and inspirational journey. The experience had such a deep effect that I wrote it all down as soon as I could find desk space and a little time away from the daily grind. It’s a true and unvarnished account of a real experience. I did not originally write the words for publication but I hope that in sharing them you will see the important moral of the story.
It began as just another boring journey on an overcrowded train; but then I was drawn into an extraordinary voyage of discovery and delight. I can still hear that broad South Yorkshire accent; see that blonde head above the red football shirt bearing the legend Rooney and the number 9. Its owner gazed intently through the window, keeping up her monologue as the train clattered through Hertfordshire on its way to St Pancras.
Mother sat alongside and tried to focus on her Daily Mail.
“Aye, that’ll be Wembley”,
her offspring exclaimed to no-one in particular. One or two passengers looked up above their Blackberries and iPhones. It was indeed Wembley Stadium. The man opposite in a Crombie coat checked his watch for the umpteenth time, as if to hasten the end of another dull and boring journey.
“Did you know”,
continued our mini-commentator,
”that’s where Wayne Rooney plays when ‘es playing for Hingland? Fink they builded it in Australia.”
Crombie Coat looked up for a brief moment and smiled patiently, then returned to his time-keeping.
“Don’t be so bloody daft,”
said Mum,
“Ow could they build Wembley Stadium in Australia? They must ‘ave used Aussie navvies. Brought ‘em over ‘ere. Don’t you get them feet on that f*ing seat. Mind that mester’s suit”
“They got kangroos in Australia,”
the little girl responded.
“Kangroos have a special place called a pouch where they feed their babies and keep ‘em warm and safe.”
She reached for her drink and sucked deeply on the straw.
“You can call ‘em marsupials”
she offered.
“Some folk say marsupials is the best mam’s in the ‘ol animal kingdom.”
Then she added thoughtfully,
‘Cept you Mam; you’re my best. We’re animals an all you know – mammals, same as whales and dolphins and that, us ‘umans. Omo sexuals, they call us an all. Scientists, that is”.
“Did them Australian navvies ‘ave to bring their own animals with them”,
the girl speculated.
“That’d be grand wouldn’t it – all them kangroos and bush babies and wannabies and stuff running all over while ‘t builders done their work. I’ll bet it’s too cold for kangroos. That’s why we don’t see ‘em ‘ere.”
She paused.
“Except in’t zoo. Do you fink kangroos can live in cold countries, Mam? What about zoos? ‘Ow do they keep em warm in zoos. Must have special ‘eaters.”
“I don’t know,”
responded her mother.
“Stop asking so many bleeding questions”.
She was thinking about kangaroos and zoos and marsupials. The rest of us were thinking about Oyster cards and black cabs. “Mam” lowered her paper.
“Get them shoes on yer feet; we’re gettin’ off soon”
“Somebody’s wrote on them walls. That’s what you call doin’ graffiti”
was the child’s response, as we passed though a North London decorated by unseen, unauthorised hands.
The train ran alongside the M1 where traffic was queuing up to the North Circular Road.
“Now why do they call it a motorway”
she exclaimed to her mother.
“When no bugger’s motrin’!”
It seemed a like a fair question.
“Know what I like?”
“No”,
sighed her mother,
“Go on, surprise us; tell me what you like.”
I waited keenly for the answer I thought her mother should already know.
“Blue”,
she said,
“What I like is blue. They put loads of blue in that graffiti. Sky’s blue, and them lickle birds there.
She gestured with excitement towards a small family of woodland birds fluttering around a tree.
“I’ll ‘ave to just warn you Mam, that I might say summat and it sounds like swearin’.” It’s them birds you see, they got a bad name. Tits. I’m not proper swearin’ Mam, honest. That’s what you ‘ave to call ‘em – tits. That’s their name. You can ‘ave great tits and coal tits and them; them are blue tits. They got beautiful colours on em an’ all. I like blue, me. Just look at fevvers on ‘im. Boys ‘ave best fevvers in birds you know. That’s so’s they can attract the ladies and shag ‘em and then they can lay eggs”.
As an afterthought she added,
“Can’t see no nests in that tree. The eggs’ll be blue.”
We had passed the graffiti and passed the scene of the birds’ less-than romantic trysts.
The train rattled on.
“To Let,”
she called out, reading a sign.
“Danger. Do not enter”.
And then,
“What does it mean if you get prosticuted, mam?”
Mother coloured slightly and turned a deaf ear to the question. Fellow travellers took care not to make eye contact.
Was I the only other to have noticed the sign which read,
“Trespassers will be prosecuted”?
I felt a special bond with the tough little tyke in the window seat.
Swiftly the landscape changed from open fields to the backs of houses on the outskirts of town.
“Rats!”
she exclaimed.
“Yer never more’n 5 foot away from a rat in London”. There’ll be rats in them buildings, shouldn’t wonder. Let’s ‘ave a sken – see if ought else lives in them fact’ries.”
She raised herself in her seat to get a better view.
“Probably got a troll under here”,
she speculated to herself as we crossed a bridge.
She wasn’t being objectionable; it’s just that she was seeing things that others couldn’t see.
“I won’t tell you again.”
Mother hissed through clenched teeth,
“Keep your feet off that mester’s suit”.
I was the mester in question.
“You can forget about getting apples off them trees”
the girl announced, noticing a crop of sorry-looking sycamores alongside the track.
“Still, must be millions o’ birds and insects lives in there.”
Then she looked me full in the face and confided,
“One time, p’raps about ‘undred million years ago, all this were covered in trees. There were now’t else. Prob’ly ‘ad dinosaurs running about an’ all”
Before I had time to reply I was rescued by the train manager’s voice coming through the public address system.
“We are now approaching London, St Pancras. London St Pancras is our last station stop. Passengers are reminded to please take all your belongings!”
Uncertain of the most appropriate reply to the remark about dinosaurs, I was glad the moment had passed and so I smiled benevolently at the child instead. But by now she had turned her relentless attention upon some people who’d risen from a nearby table. They were assembling their laptops and bags and coats. Unabashed the girl addressed a woman in an expensive-looking tweed coat.
“Tha’s best tek them newspapers, Missus, or e’ll ‘ave a fit, that guard. Tek all yer belongings, same as ‘e said.”
The woman failed to respond to this sincerely helpful suggestion.
And then we’d arrived. For us it had been just another boring journey on the Midland mainline. For her it had been a voyage of wonderment and discovery.
“This is St Pancras where the train terminates”,
the train manager reaffirmed.
The girl turned to her mother.
“Do you know, they call their babies Joeys?”
Without waiting for a reply she continued,
“If I could jump as ‘igh as an ant, I could jump right over this whole station roof!”
On leaving the train, I gazed thoughtfully at the magnificent arching roof of St Pancras station. Looking down I could see mother and daughter ahead of me. There was the red football shirt with the number 9 and Rooney on the back. The blonde hair was rising and falling as the child skipped lightly through the station hall. I unholstered my iPad and flexed my fingers thinking maybe I’d make a note to check for blue and for nests and maybe for baby kangaroos the next time I passed those trees, those birds, those buildings. In my notes I typed the words,
“Next time look out for the troll”.
