It’s much harder, when I’m not traveling, to find topics to write about. Each day, I think about interesting subjects but when I actually begin to formulate how I might write about them, I lose confidence. They seem mundane. But life is mundane.
For example, yesterday, I went to the St. Margaret’s Fair. It’s an annual event and was touted as having many local musicians performing. It was being held in a park I hadn’t been to before, so I thought I should go and check it out. I thought it might have local artisans selling their wares, with local food as well. It was a warm day and the sky was bright but overcast. That happens a lot in England: the sky is pretty much white with light reflecting from the cloud cover. I walked around the entirety of the fair and stayed for about 40 minutes.
The fair was setup in a semi-organized fashion with stalls placed in a circle facing outwards most of the way around the park and the stage at one end, where the stalls ended and the refreshment trucks/stands were. Unfortunately, there was a clash of music from: 1) what seemed like a disco/DJ (where no one was dancing but a group of girls were standing, itching to dance), 2) a radio host emceeing the Castellers of London who were off to one side of the park doing some acrobatics and dancing, which it was difficult to see because so many spectators were standing up watching them, and then the Twickenham Academy of Dance who started performing right in front of the emcee, and again another group stood up to encircle the dancers so it was difficult to see, and 3) the music stand, where the local musicians were playing. It was a cacophony of sound to say the least.
As I wandered the perimeter of the fair, the emcee intermittently made the following announcement: “Please keep a lookout for two 5-year-old boys who appear to be lost. One has blue face-paint.” It was pretty disturbing and I was surprised that I didn’t see anyone who looked particularly alarmed that these two boys may have disappeared.
I tried to get some photos at the fair but ultimately felt a bit weird taking photos of children and so didn’t take any.
As I left the fair, I noted that it was really geared up for children. I admit that I had sat down for about 20 minutes and watched children interacting with their parents, eating and dropping ice creams, and running around. It was so nice and helped me to forget the sadness I feel that my children are long past that age where they displayed such freedom. I also wondered how elderly people would cope with all of the noise that I mentioned above. I found it quite distracting – I wasn’t able to enjoy any one sound because it was hard to distinguish one from another.
And, I thought about how we need these events to breakup the monotony of daily life. I think most humans must be quite bored with their lives and we have to find distractions to fill up all of the time we have.
Fiona's World 