Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated

This plane is far too full. Given the many precautions of the airport with careful separation of passengers by means of floor signs, sealed off areas, seats taped over to enforce distancing and even the queueing policy and masks mandatory there was a sense of these people know how to make this Covid-safe space. But even in the airport, despite all appearances, there were obvious flaws. Every single hand cleansing dispenser was empty. I knew because I’m paranoid enough to insist on using them all. That should’ve given me a heads up that all was not what it seemed. However, it was only when I entered the departure lounge that everything went really pear-shaped. My gate was absolutely packed with the queue snaking right around the entire hall. People were trying to keep a safe distance but the room was just not big enough. 

Then, we were jammed into the airport buses, on route to the plane, like sardines. Gone was any pretence of social distancing. We were packed far too tightly to permit even a bulky handbag to separate us. I consoled myself with the thought that the plane would be better. After all, the last time I flew on this route, in Covid times, there were only 16 people on the whole plane. I actually managed to stretch out and sleep across three vacant seats for the first time in years. Not this time! The plane rapidly filled to the brim. Obviously, being a Christmas flight, many were returning to Dublin for the festive period. I initially thought I would be the only fortunate person on the plane to have vacant seats on either side of me. Unfortunately, once the door of the plane closed there was a rapid reshuffling and a man took one of the empty seats in my row. I briefly contemplated the social etiquette of pointing out he should sit in the seat indicated by his ticket. However, since there was by now a massive reseating going on all over the plane I decided making a fuss was not in order. At least I didn’t have the chap two rows ahead beside me. He was wearing a mask so small it did not cover his mouth or nose, more of a chin strap. Who does he think he is fooling? Never mind I put my head back and try to relax. The stewards came around to take the food order and I politely declined. I have purchased an expensive FFP3 mask for this flight and I’m not risking removing it to either drink or eat. But darn it the people all around me are suddenly removing their masks so they can stuff their faces. Perhaps I should just relax after all I have had Covid already in May. 

On that last trip, I had flown to Ireland from Malta and brought a packed lunch to eat on the plane during the journey. After the flight, I got onto the bus for the long journey to Belfast. On that particular last leg of the journey, I did not feel at all well. In fact, by the time it arrived in Belfast, outside the Europa hotel, I barely managed to stagger off the bus before vomiting on the pavement. This startled me as I rarely ever vomit. As I’ve mentioned before, even in the face of food poisoning (a dodgy Chinese family meal) all vomited but my dad and I.  Then, when sailing with friends in rough weather, who were vomiting in unison either side of me, I managed to still enjoy my Mars bar. So, it was weird for me to feel so bad. I recovered once I had emptied my stomach. But within two weeks my mum and I both had Covid. Did I catch it on the plane? Somehow two weeks seems too long. Who knows, it could have been from a supermarket trip, getting petrol for the car, a neighbour who came too close to talk.   I’ll never know but Covid was horrid. I had a mild but nasty period but my poor 87-year-old mum was eventually hospitalised and had to have oxygen. Thankfully she fought her way back to health despite her age, damaged lungs and asthma and came home safely. Mind you, both of us are convinced our brains are just not the same. 

So, the reason I’m a bit paranoid on this plane is because I’m heading once again to be with my mum and I’m frankly terrified I’ll pick up the virus on route. The science is rather vague about how long antibodies and T cells remain in your system after you’ve been exposed to the virus and recovered. A few months was mentioned initially but then it seemed to depend on the severity of the original infection. Those who with the milder symptoms seem to lose their immunity faster. Then, there’s also vagueness about whether you yourself could be immune but still carry the virus to others. Just the possibility of that has generated a longing for 2m between me and all my neighbours on this flight. The younger generation seems much more relaxed about this disease. The young man behind me is chatting up a pretty girl in the seat beside him. They have that excited nervous first conversation, not exactly flirty, but each wanting to put their best foot forward. I’m wishing they would talk less as they’re too close to me. 

There are only two elderly people on this flight and I can tell they are panicking. Both wear a visor and a mask to protect themselves, a smart move I should have thought of. When the old man had entered the plane he had started a heated argument with a young man with a crewcut seated in 1A. The elderly man was sure this upstart was sitting in his seat and argued loudly while hitting his boarding pass with a red pointed finger. The air steward intervened as the young man searched for his boarding pass on his phone. It took time for the truth to emerge as the elderly man behind his mask and visor couldn’t hear the steward very well. It turned out his boarding ticket was in row three not row one and he and his grey-haired wife were eventually persuaded to move on down the plane to their real seats. In the middle of the confusion, his wife took a severe cramp in her calf and had to stop and rub it while groaning in pain. I have real sympathy with this getting older. Along with more pain, it makes mistakes more likely. There really should be compassion for the elderly. Remembering to wear masks is tricky once you get past a certain age. You can easily forget. 

In Malta, masks are mandatory everywhere outdoors and I have managed to get a block from home before remembering to pull a mask from my bag. Why is it so tricky? It’s because it’s foreign. The younger generation can adapt to change but older people have their life long habits engraved in brains of cement.  When you periodically lose your train of thought, can’t find that word and miss place inanimate objects with depressing regularity then obeying brand new regulations is really tough. There is a video of a pensioner online, entering a supermarket and mistaking a drink dispenser for an alcoholic hand spray and pouring the brightly coloured sugar drink over both palms and then rubbing in the sticky stuff earnestly. One’s heart leaps in real sympathy. When they hand out fines for not wearing a mask I think old age should be a valid excuse! 

Travelling had already become harder, even before Covid hit and was becoming very tiring. The distance covered by travellers in the airport has become longer, time standing in queues in steep stairways adds to the torture. The steps on a Ryanair aircraft are rickety and narrow with steps that are smaller than normal-sized feet. You end up coming down the steps on your heels with most of your foot projecting out mid-air. The whole structure moves like a rickety ladder and there’s no room to carry a suitcase by your side. Instead, you have to hold it in front of you pulling you forward dangerously over your toes. The fact that these ladders fold into the plane has to be convenient for the airlines but it’s a real liability for the elderly/pregnant/parent with small children. 

Another couple in front of me is also courting across the aisle. I suspect young people are desperate to socialise. Planes are replacing nightclubs, pubs and other social venues. We older ones avoid such unnecessary exposure to germs.  The young are excited to have these hours to get to know someone new at last. I cannot blame them. After all, they are young and feel invincible. Their immune systems are humming along nicely. Fighting off infections like crack troops. Ours are a withered bunch who have been whittled away by chronic conditions. Our systems often already need medication to keep our troops in line and in order.  These elderly troops seem less vigilant and effective.  I can remember getting deep cuts in my knees, when younger, and they healed so quickly. Healed and left no scars. Now marks remain for years and can even grow to form deep creases. Opportunistic growths appear in unlikely places and these old bodies view these invaders as bedfellows that just have to be endured. Decisions are sometimes made to rip such opportunistic growths off a shoulder or back but need to be weighed with the scar that will be left. Deciding to go for the scar or just ignore this new tenant have to be thought through.  In fact, with time you are a bit embarrassed by your battlefield body.  Once a nurse was worried by a huge bleeding sore on my forearm when I had decided this particular growth had outgrown my tolerance for it.  On my next visit to a health clinic, a different nurse was horrified by the size of an unsightly growth on my wrist.  As I made my way home I was trying to work out which had caused more distress in medical staff.  To rip off or leave alone, difficult to decide?

The other change that age brings is that you are more sensitive to stress.  You’d think with experience you’d be able to weather difficulties better.  But the truth is with age you long for peace and quiet and toxic atmospheres corrode your wellbeing.  Unexpected stress freaks you out.  As do last-minute changes or having to rush because you are late.  Responsibilities weigh more heavily.  You sweat over grandchildren.  Worry about their safety, fear you will fail them through inattention or carelessness.  Knowing how tricky inanimate objects have become, like jar lids that won't open, you are freaked out by these active strong-willed characters.  Their minds are like quicksilver and you feel like a heavy-footed cart horse.  These bones don’t move so fast anymore and these old brains don’t process thoughts so well.  There are benefits. Strangely emotions grow stronger with age.  A beautiful landscape can move us to tears.  As can a child’s smile or a sweet memory of an old friend.

Sleep changes. When you are young you can do without sleep all night. Function pretty well all the next day before collapsing the next night. When you are old, sleep becomes something you keep track off like a bank balance. Every morning you will enquire of everyone you live with if they slept well. It is a subject of interest to you as sleeping has become a hit or miss affair. No more total collapse into a blissful full night’s sleep. Instead, bladder trips pepper the night and often sleep does not follow these outings. Then the night shift of bedroom roof inspection begins.  Tired of the horrible thoughts that bubble up in a sleep-deprived mind I generally get up and have breakfast at 3 am. With a full belly sometimes sleep comes as an unexpected desert. With such varied experiences at night no wonder the elderly have daily conversations about sleep. And that doesn’t even cover the dreams. In old age, you can find yourself back in stress-inducing situations that years ago you might have faced. But now, at this stage in life, the stress is hyper experienced and unbearable.  You wake up traumatised by an experience you manage to wade through with difficulty in your prime but is now played in your dream as an awful sequel. When an older person asks you with genuine concern ‘Did you sleep well?” Know in what context they ask.  They know what a bad night feels like, the emotions that rip open wounded hearts. So, out of love, they want to be reassured that your sleep was sound and blissful. It pleases them to know someone is getting a good night’s sleep.

My romantic neighbours behind me are on their second meal of this flight. They consume vast quantities of drink that we older travellers would never challenge our bladders with. These young people after hours of flight look remarkably fresh. It reminds me of two friends of mine who went into the local maternity ward at the same time and gave birth on the same day. Amused by the synchronicity of this event, photos were taken of the two friends with their new babies on the ward. The young mother in her 20’s looked like a model in her nightgown with a freshly flushed complexion glowing with happiness. My 43-year-old older friend held her baby like an anchor that was too heavy to hold and looked like she had been through 20 rounds of a vicious heavyweight boxing match.  Even her hair seemed freaked out. The contrast between the two mothers in the photograph had us all roaring in laughter and sympathy. As I look around this plane I can see a similar phenomenon.  The young look exactly as they did when they entered this plane. We oldies look like we’ve been dragged through bushes backwards for several nights. Eyelids are closing independently of their owners and mouths seem to be pulled by gravity into grimaces that speak of back pain that has reached intolerable proportions. Old bones shift uncomfortably and long to be flat on orthopaedic mattresses. Cramps come and go in unlikely places and vague indigestion has begun to brew. Gasses gather inside you as if your own personal air balloon is being inflated.  The noisy happy flirtatious chat of excited young people has become like dentist drills in our heads. We admire their energy and commitment but long for our own oblivion in a deep sleep. Our bank balances are running extremely low and being polite to others takes incredible effort. Excited chitchat from youngsters is like fingernails on the blackboard. 

But we must endure.  That’s what age teaches you. Patience with yourself and others, the flaws, the worries and the pains. It’s a hard-won quality and it makes you wish for all onboard this plane a safe journey and a good night sleep at the end of it. Because isn’t that what we all long for at the end of these lives of ours.

Blood and gusts, urine and rescue

Northern Ireland reminds me so much of my roots. Sitting in the waiting room in the haematology Department I get chatting to an 85-year-old fellow patient. Our conversation was triggered by a much older man nearby getting his blood taken in a treatment room. Being wheelchair bound and extremely deaf, every exchange with the staff is audible to all in the waiting room outside. His medical records indicate he was born on the 10^th of February and the nurse treating him comments that her father was also born on that day. He asks loudly, “but what year was he born?” The nurse answers with, “1933” and his response to that is, “Sure, he’s only a young one isn’t he?” Or to be more accurate what he actually said was “Ach sure e’s only a yungon ainy?”  But I shall spare all of you any more of the deadly Northern Ireland dialect.

The people in the waiting room smile in response, feeling much better about their own age. The man beside me is also a young one born in 1933 and informs me he is the youngest of a family of eight. His elder sister never married and lived until her 97^th year, a lovely kind woman he tells me.  One of his brothers was in the military and died in his 50s, this was accompanied by a sad sigh of loss despite the decades that have since passed. We talk of places and family. His name is Anderson and I also have family members called Anderson but he comes from a different area entirely in Northern Ireland called Cookstown. I told him I have a relative who ran the pharmacy in Cookstown for years and suddenly I realise the unknown person beside me in Northern Ireland is invariably either related/lives beside a relative/or went to school with a relative.

The communication goes deeper and we share our relief at the rescue of the Thai youngsters from the dark deep water-logged cave. In such moments humans show their compassion and unity in longing for their safe rescue. All of us have become invested in these young footballers. Their release is a joyous relief. Of course, we are picky about our investment of emotional attachment. Thousands drowning in the Mediterranean pluck few heartstrings but a tiny toddler face down in the surf of a beach breaks through our intellectual defences. Likewise, millions facing desperate conditions in Yemen don’t make it onto our newspapers. Instead, the infantile posturing of the self-important gets three-inch high headlines. The worst humanitarian disaster facing humanity at present is considered of little or no impact importance in this perverse world of ours.

My 85-year-old fellow patient is struggling to maintain his garden these days just like my mum. They are both suffering from the present hosepipe ban. The younger gardeners manage by using watering cans but for the over 80s they just have to watch their flowers wilt and fade while their lawns grow brown and die. He tells me he was the last child born in his family and was 18 pounds at birth*.  He’s a nice good-natured 85-year-old, well dressed and well spoken. I tell him he’s lucky to have been brought up in a big family surrounded by loved ones.

Then, he says all his brothers and sisters have since died. The last he lost was a sister 12 years ago.  He’s all alone now. No brothers or sisters, his wife gone and his only son lives abroad. I had idly thought that the lonely were usually drug addicts or alcoholics who had systematically broken or abused every family relationship until they were homeless with no one left to care. I had not factored in that death in old age is equally effective in breaking all the loving bonds that unite families.  Gradually death casts aside all the mooring lines that attach you to others. Drifting off, these individuals are unexpected alone after a lifetime of being loved and surrounded by kindness. They don’t expect it and have no time to acclimatise to this new brutal reality. They have all the social skills that life in a loving family cultivates. They’re good-natured, long-suffering, grateful for all the special souls that have shared this journey with them. But suddenly they bereft and alone facing hospital visits and treatment alone. There is no one to share the bad news with. It fills my heart with sudden sympathy. They cultivate a new kinship with those in here to get blood tests regularly and most seem to know each other. Suddenly, as the conversations develop the noise levels rise and it makes me feel Northern Irish. That characteristic chattiness and love of a good gossip binds and quickly unites us.  They’re talking about football now anticipating the big game tomorrow as one man in a wheelchair is wheeled out of a treatment room and placed beside us.  As the consultant passes back into the treatment room he points out to the nurse that “We seem to have a leak here!”  Horrified everyone notices that the man’s wheelchair is parked in a puddle of urine that has dripped from his chair.  The consultant closes this door, the nurse rushes to get cleaning material and we are all left in awkward silence.

Into the humiliating silence, people unexpectedly begin to share tales of their own humiliation. Some are really cracking tales told in commiseration for the chap in the wheelchair.  One character, Jesse, a middle-aged man in a red tracksuit says his bowels stopped working a year ago. He was given fibre gel, lactose, senna etc and growing arsenal of stuff designed to give him a good ‘pull through’ as my grandfather would call it. All to no avail in Jesse's case,” I was blocked up as if by cement!” He explained.  “They give me everything short of dynamite to get me going but all failed. After three weeks I felt my innards would explode if no relief came. I was swollen like a pregnant pup and the pain was awful. I could barely sit and standing was not much better!  Anyway, unknown to me my doc arranged for me to be hospitalised. They took me on board this ambulance for a 10-minute drive to the local hospital. I didn’t make it. Eight minutes into the trip, my bowels finally decided to get going after being on strike for three weeks. There was I, in the back of an ambulance, having the bowel movement of the century. I apologised to the wee lass with me in the back of the ambulance and the driver and the nurse who helped clean me up on the ward later. I thought I’d be mortified beyond belief! But you know what, I was rightly relieved and grateful too! It’s not until you can’t do something that you begin to appreciate the miracle of anything.” 

It was a cracking tale that had us all laughing in stitches. Even the poor guy sitting in the wheelchair in a puddle started giggling.  The nurse came back into the waiting room mop and bucket in hand. First, she sprayed some disinfectant on the floor and then carefully mopped up the urine, moving the wheelchair to get underneath.  Then she left and the humiliation was back in the room.  Everyone knew he was sitting in soaking clothes wet and uncomfortable.

We were rescued by a white-haired lady sitting opposite who shared her story of humiliation. Once she’d been a deputy head of school and had gone in to talk to the headmaster in his office. While there she felt an unexpected urge to fart. While not been able to avoid passing wind she did manage to do so silently, “silent but deadly” she informed the riveted room. After the conversation was over she left the office happy that she had got away with the unexpected gust without being noticed.  A few minutes later she realised she had left her handbag in the office and returned to the office knocking briefly before entering to retrieve her bag. There, she found the headmaster with the office window open using a large newspaper to waft out the offending smell.  She said, “I didn’t know where to look, I actually put my hands over my eyes, I was that ashamed.  I left the office without saying a word and thought suicide was my only option!”  In the silence that followed we all howled in mirth.  The room was full of riotous laughter and good humour.  There are true comedians skilled in tales to bring you back from the edge of despair.  Sharing their own humiliation turned an unmitigated disaster into something else for all of us. 

_.

* I found this almost unbelievable but then found out afterwards that the record for "heaviest birth" is currently held by Anna Bates, who gave birth to a boy weighing 22 pounds in Seville, Ohio, on January 19, 1879.

Breaks, Drunks and a distinct lack of tea

No one warns you about falling. Yet so many do exactly that. In fact for the elderly a fall is the most common entry into the hospital/residence home system. It is a sad fact of life that almost any of us who have a severely broken leg will struggle to cope. When you cannot reach things, make your own food and suddenly become dependent on others, it feels like being a helpless child again. All your plans including work of any sort is shelved. Usual routines like housework, coffee breaks, visits to friends become challenging. But however difficult for those who are middle-aged and younger, it is as nothing compare to that facing the elderly in the same situation.

Their responsibilities may well include being a caregiver for an elderly partner. Suddenly, what was a 24-hour job becomes untenable. Often a fracture in an elderly person will not just lead to their hospitalisation but also institutionalisation of the remaining partner. Added to the anguish of pain and medical procedure is is the realisation that the closest person to you has been left vulnerable and taken from your home by the social services. Confusion reigns as the elderly quickly lose a sense of where/who they are when moved out of familiar surroundings and company. Recovery from major injury can take months not weeks and always there is a very real possibility that there may be no recovery. 

In many places hospital care has been centralised. This means people are often taken far from their family, friends and neighbours.  When they most need support and care, that lifeline is severed by the long distances travelled to receive medical procedures.  Waiting time in casualties the world over are now in excess of three/four hours.  Even after you see a doctor no one tells you what has happened.  For fear of litigation or lack of staff, communication is minimised.  So the elderly are left in beds confused as to what injury they have sustained.  Not sure what will happen next and completely disorientated by this new and frightening environment.  Trained not to complain they endure in silence while others shout for attention.  I have visited relatives who have been in hospital for days and they still have not been told what their injury is. Even basic things like fluid intake are neglected.  There used to be a lovely little lady in Coleraine hospital who would come around casualty and hand out tea and toast.  In the chaos and confusion her smiling face offering hot tea and warm toast was like an angel in a war zone.  

Nowadays, she has been replaced by on duty police officers to restrain the many drunks who attack staff and other patients.  These officers are really needed. I had a young student friend, John who was in casualty for a broken arm.  While awaiting treatment for this injury a violent drunk broke his nose as well.  I must confess to losing my sympathy for such violent individuals.  It feels as if they have decided to get drunk and in that state injured themselves.  Then, when brought to casualties up and down the country they wreck havoc on staff trying to treat them and even other patients sharing the waiting room.  It tests compassion indeed when the elderly have to share such spaces with these drunks.  The injured elderly are particularly vulnerable to abuse and know it.

Regained mobility is not taken for granted by the elderly. They know like health, mobility can be gone in the crack of a bone. Who you are and how you think about yourself all can change in a single second.  The only aspiration becomes regaining what you once had and that seems an epic battle fraught with setbacks and unexpected complications. When they have wrestled and fought to regain normality they cannot easily forget this torment.

So understand when the elderly want to tell you the details of their illness even after they recover. It is a form of post-traumatic stress and having fought on a battlefield filled with pain, sleepless nights and vulnerability they need to retell their suffering. Talk through the trauma and understand their life’s journey has changed. All can play an important role in helping them, take ownership of themselves and their path in this world by just listening. With each retelling the experience becomes more of their past and less of the present. They gain perspective on what has happened to them. Your listening ear provides a recognition of what they have been through. But don't be afraid after listening, to move the conversation on. Your insights and interests are exactly the world of outside hospitals they need to rediscover. It's just for many the hospital corridors have been long and agony filled.  It takes time for them to mentally navigate and find their exit. 

Parallel universes exist in this earth. There is the life inside hospital and life outside. Two completely different worlds.

It's hotting up, our lives matter

In August 2003 there was an extraordinary loss of life that occurred in the heart of Europe that seems to have been overlooked by many.  In these days of terrorism, mass shootings and Ebola quiet deaths are just not news.  So when 70,000 people died during the month of August it barely made a ripple abroad.  It was caused by an unusual heat wave and the deaths were mostly elderly.  France alone lost 15,000.  The temperatures rose into the 40s and stayed there for days.  Strangely, even the nights were hot and with so many without air conditioners the elderly were particularly vulnerable.  Social isolation and fragmented families meant that there were just too few to care or notice.  From the 4^th – 14^th August France suffered its longest sequence of hot days on record.  The extent of the human toll was first detected by undertakers, who were being overwhelmed with unclaimed bodies. In Paris, some of the corpses had to be kept in a warehouse outside the city when mortuaries were full.  By the heat wave’s end it became clear that the nation had some soul searching to do.  It was made worse by the fact that bodies, in large numbers, remained unclaimed for burial.  

Given that global warming should contribute to more, not less, of these unusual extreme conditions we have all much to reflect on. Dehydration, hyperthermia and heat stroke fuelling cardiac and respiratory diseases claimed many lives.  The elderly were the vulnerable section of society that bore the brunt of deaths. A disheartening discovery was that one of four victims had no family, friends, or even a single social link.  Such stark isolation along with a lack of national policy of how to deal with such extreme conditions meant the deaths took everyone by surprise.  Shame was also felt by the nation as a whole.  If we judge our society by how it treats the young, the old and the ill then this tragic event highlighted deep problems.  In this electronic age of world wide communication, instant messages, Facebook and Skype it seems, in reality, people are often more isolated than every before.  Loneliness and isolation can actually kill.  How we live as a society can either contribute to our wellbeing or lead to us dying alone and unnoticed.

Lessons must be learned.  Heat waves have happened before in other places.  Chicago had a heat wave in the summer of 1995 and fatalities were mostly from the poorest and most vulnerable African American community.  One community that bucked the trend was the equally poor Hispanic population.  This community is thought to have better survival rates due to its unity and cohesion.  In July 2010 Russia lost a third of their wheat harvest in fires due to a heat wave reaching temperatures of 44 degrees.  By the end of that month 56,000 Russians had died.  

Climate change is happening and its costs are already being felt by life on this planet.  Society is wasting time on wars and battles that are using resources that should be put in place to save lives not end them.  This is one planet and we are one race, the human race.  Each life lost diminishes us.  How we choose to live will effect who and how many will die.  As a society we need to make wise informed choices and learn to build cohesive communities, as if our lives depended on it.  Because they do!

Fighting development tooth and nail

Huge apartment blocks spring up like Japanese knotweed all over the world.  Shopping malls have become entrenched in cities like pernicious weeds.  They have even developed their own subcultures.  Studies show how young people claim such places as their own personal playgrounds.  We will gradually unearth how such shared spaces have changed city cultures for more than just the youth.  

Already, the elderly have migrated to such malls in search of warmth and company.  When you are truly alone even being in the vicinity of others becomes a vicarious pleasure.  You get to watch changing real life interactions instead of the TV.  In northern climes the cost of heating becomes too expensive for those on limited pensions.  Shopping malls become a cheaper alternative.  A place to stretch their legs protected from the elements.  In some cities these serve as social hubs.  Where you can check out the latest hospitalisation, death, opinion, experience and news.  In our cities the elderly, the disabled or ill can feel city streets are far too unpredictable.  Traffic, uneven pavements, gangs of youth can restrict their routines.  To have a place with some level of security can be a welcome blessing.  

Next time you are in a shopping centre have a good look around at the people who inhabit such places.  Some malls, target the vulnerable (not spenders) and have become proactive in driving what they see as ‘spongers’ out of their patch.  Security guards harass gangs of youth to move them on.  The elderly are more easily displaced by a lack of seating in such centres.  

Women with pre-school children linger near colourful displays and toyshops.  Their offspring are free to explore these shiny corridors unburdened with coats etc.  In amongst the motley throng are the real shoppers that the whole centre is designed for.  They emerge from doors laden down with bags advertising their purchases.  They don’t dawdle but walk purposefully from one hunting area to the next.  The big hunters know all of this is aimed at them.  They prowl their kingdom expecting bargains and good service.  Astute shopping assistants can spot the big cats with a glance. They know these watering holes have an attraction but must be careful in how they engage these lions.  Too much attention is seen as harassment, too little as bad service.  A good assistant should be able to read a client.  Is this a predator in good nick?  Ready to spend?  Or are they one of the subcultures killing time in the shopping paradise?  Judging this right will mean they adopt either a subservient attitude or a haughty dismissive turn of the head.  These places are not social centres after all.  They are designed to make money, that is their sole reason for being.  

If you have the time enter the nearest shopping mall to you.  Spend an hour but not one penny.  Observe the sub cultures that you find.  Actually, see those that share your space.  What is their age range?  Do they look happy and content?  Will you find that the majority are there, not out of choice but, as a refuge from something.  The young shop assistant opposite me has been manning her jewellery display for almost an hour.  No one has bought anything or even looked at her products.  She periodically combs out her long hair flicking is over her shoulder.  Then, she checks out her appearance in the mirror beside her cash register.  She fiddles with trays of rings.  Taking them out and putting them in again.  Occasionally, she presses buttons on her till to look busy.  Afterwards, she rearranges some necklaces as if they have been fingered out of position.  Now, she’s examining the jewellery as if she is a customer hoping to get someone to emulate her.  No joy, she’s reverted to combing her hair again and walking sideways in front of the mirror checking the waistline.  Tip toeing to see if her blouse is tucked in smoothly.  It’s disheartening to see the repetitive displacement activity in a human.  Mindlessly repeating useless activity because they have no other choice.  

Am I any different?  I walk along the front to a different café/venue each day and then write what comes to mind.  It’s being creative I tell myself but how much of it just marking time?  I may be on a longer more scenic circuit but is there any difference?  My activity is in many ways less worthy than hers.  She earns a wage, while I churn out my writing.  Everyone in this mall has his or her reasons for being here.  Security, warmth, company, work, shopping or people watching.  The escalators move in ceaseless circles moving us up and down.  The giant hamster wheels that transport us to shop entrances.  Wall to wall window displays all around, do our thinking for us.  The swish of notes and change out of cash registers mark the passing of our lives.  Busy, busy bees going nowhere together.

There are those who have fought all this development tooth and nail.  In fact in China they are called ‘Nail Houses’.  Refusing to sell up, they hang on long after the rest have cashed in.  They anchor themselves to the spot when there is no longer anything much left to protect.  The photos of their stubbornness are as brutal as any war.  One is not sure to either admire their steadfastness or bemoan their wasted endeavours.  I’ll let the photos do the talking.