Somewhere to sit

There's so much movement in the city - buses rattling down the road, cars accelerating round corners, people pounding with speed and purpose down flattened pavements. Slow down and you risk your life, or at least having your foot trodden on, your back jostled, a muttered curse - the only safe speed to travel in the city is fast.

There are times when you're still - the train held at a red signal, trying not to lean on the sweating person behind you in the tube. Waiting, waiting for that damn bus. It's an enforced immobility, a barrier in the way of the natural movement of urban life, a frustration likely to take you to boiling point.

So it was almost with surprise that I saw this empty bench on the road near my bus stop. I had never even noticed it before, and it clearly wasn't very well used. Passers by swerved to avoid it, so that it acted more as an obstacle than a refuge from the constant kinetic activity surrounding it. But as it sat there, elegant, scrolled, a relic from another age, it became ever more appealing. I wanted to take advantage of the generous curved seat, rest my back on the high wooden slats, allow my calf muscles to relax. It was almost alien - so unlike the narrow, uncomfortable perching posts installed in the modern bus stop where I waited.

I couldn't of course, take such a step out of the normal course of my homeward trail. Too strange, almost a defeat, to allow myself the moment of sweet stillness. A fear, perhaps, that if I allow myself somewhere to sit, I may never again get up.