Noticing the stories you are living in …........ or ............ ‘Here's something that happened to me the other day’

I was never a big fan of train journeys.  However, reliable or unreliable, I was not a fan of being out of control of my choice of route and nor being able to choose the people that I was travelling with!  The compensation of being able to relax while travelling, the ‘letting the train take the strain’ of a distant advertising campaign, never really worked for me.  In addition, there is something of the hypervigilant in me that means I don’t find it easy to sleep.  Anyway, I have become more appreciative of trains over the years perhaps when I realised that, although I could not sleep, I could concentrate on doing complex work without fear of being interrupted.  This was at a time when I was really busy, much in demand by lots of people, and being harried by electronic comms every minute of the day.  Looking back, I realise my switch of allegiance to train travel coincided with the time when mobile data connection on trains was not easy!  Nothing to do with the mode of transport then, more to do with cutting off from the incessant chatter that comes alongside data connectivity, including the chatter initiated by me!

Today the three-hour journey with one stop had been an oasis of calm and, credit where it’s due, absolutely on time.  I’d actually managed to get a lot of creative work done, so I stepped down on to the platform feeling like the journey had been time well spent.

My plan was to carry on with some work that I had to do, so I followed some fairly arcane instructions on how to gain access to my Airbnb which I had booked in haste and not really paid much attention to.  It was something of a surprise then to find myself at home in a 16th floor apartment in a fully glazed high rise in the middle of one of England’s biggest cities.  The view through the floor to ceiling windows was sensational.  The city was sprawled out below me in all directions I could with plenty of evidence of modern architecture in my immediate surroundings, punctuated by much older red brick railway buildings, a viaduct, and a church.  That word oasis came to mind again, of the traditional among the shiny and new!  There appeared to be a lot of green space dotted around as well and rather more threateningly some empty space, ready for that next big infrastructure project.

All this viewed through my closed floor to ceiling window which on closer inspection I realised I could open.  Not just to tilt it, but to slide it open fully.  Bifolds on the sixteenth floor.  How cool is that?  The experience of the view I have just described increased in intensity by a thousand-fold, because of feeling the breeze on my face, sensing the chill in the air, and being one step away from a very large drop.

I had a bit of a wobble as the open-window-high-up-in-fully-glazed-building triggered a memory for me.  Years ago, I was in charge of Halls of Residence at the University of Southampton.  During my time, there were a number of new buildings that came into use.  Several of these were high rise, built with a façade that was substantially glass.  For safety reasons all windows in student accommodation have restrictors on them to prevent opening beyond a certain point.  On the ground floor this is for security reasons, and above more for safety.  It was one of the aspects of student room design that everyone understood the reasoning behind, yet it always remained a bone of contention.  In the present it felt distinctly odd standing in front of an open window at such a height given that past experience and there was an odd feeling of guilt in feeling pleasure from something that I had denied other people in the past.  It was all a bit unsettling, and I confess to being a little more cautious about my open patio door, despite keeping it open all the time I was there.  I should add that there was a protective panel to prevent stepping out which fulfilled all legal requirements.  That did not stop it feeling like it was ankle rather than hip height!

The night time view from my 16th floor patio door!

The view was enhanced by good weather.  That alongside the noises drifting up from the busy pedestrianised space below, put paid to my intent of firing up the laptop and reconnecting with the world.  I rationalised that I would still be doing good work by going and checking out the venue I was to be working at the following day.  Like a good boy scout that is what I set out to do, but unlike a scout I went out prepared only for the sunny weather I was witnessing through my window!

The distant memories of past jobs were banished by more contemporary concerns as I found that the route I was walking along coincided with the route of a pro-Palestinian demonstration march.  I tried to put myself in the shoes of both communities involved in the dreadful situation in Gaza without making the mistake of sitting on the fence for my own comfort.  While the right to defend oneself against unprovoked attack is absolute in my view, the scale and duration of the response, and the death and displacement of so many innocents is not a proportionate response.  I also thought about how important it was for these demonstrations to keep the Gaza sitaution in people’s minds, stopping it fading into a memory, pushed out of consciousness by the banality of local issues and a heavily stage-managed general election for example!

I eventually got to my destination, satisfied myself about the facilities available and then retraced my steps.  With the sun still shining I visited a Co-op to get to some fruit for a healthy breakfast and came out of the shop to find the sun had been replaced by torrential rain.  I waited for 10 minutes before setting out briskly when it eased a little, only to be caught in another squall that soaked me to the skin.  I did not have an extensive wardrobe in my luggage, so I had to air dry what I had.  I thought, find a café, get undercover, have a hot drink, and dry off. 

What actually happened was pub, beer, karaoke, and dry off!  Hey, don’t judge me, and just to be clear it was not me doing the singing.  What happened is the first place I came to (it was about 1815 at this point) was a ‘new but old’ city centre pub.  I did not care anything beyond the fact it was open and dry.  I muscled past the huge bouncer, pushed inside and found music belting out, Wolverhampton races on the telly, and loads of fairly drunk elderly folk!  I looked round to see if there were signs indicating this was some sort of themed session.  There were none, so I went to ask for a coffee to find it wasn’t available so the decent thing to do was to have a pint.  I went and sat at one of those high café type table and chair combos.  You know the sort – the ones that you can never get onto or down from easily and once you are seated you feel vulnerable as you are head and shoulders above everyone else.  Anyway, it was too late to move once I had landed, and it was only then that I noticed I was near the corner of the pub full of all sorts of audio equipment flashing away.  It was clearly driving the music which was so loud it almost vibrated through you.  No one seemed to be doing anything with this equipment although beside it was a man who was the only person in the place who appeared to be moved by what he was hearing, swaying and lip syncing, and sipping coke!

I got my phone out and did some messaging, aka people watching, as I drip dried.  I realised that a couple of folks were now sitting in amongst the music area, only a couple of feet away from me.  Gradually, I became absorbed in what I was reading and disappeared into my own world, cocooned by the music.  At some point I became aware of Bob Marley’s voice, right here in the pub, not just a record playing.  As I rejoined the real world I looked up to find my coke drinking friend was singing his heart out to ‘Is This Love’.  He was absolutely sensational.  It was a moment to marvel at the power of music and performance and how they trigger emotion and, once again, memory.  I had a tear in my eye, lump in my throat, memories of my younger self…the full shebang!  When he finished I shook his hand, no words were necessary!  He returned to his coke, me to my inner world and the music moved to the 1980s.  A sequence of The Communards, Erasure, The Tourists, Depeche Mode again took me back to the experience of being a younger me, with a tangible consequence of feeling more upbeat, more energetic, a little younger.  The significance of this feeling was very real given some of the things on my mind at the moment are connected with a sense of ageing, no doubt connected to this year being home to my 60th birthday!

Shortly after a group of 70+s came in:  Paddy, Sandra, and Seamus, not that I knew their names at that time.  I think even before buying a drink Paddy, small in stature big in presence, walked over to music central I think with a USB stick and a whisper in the ear to one of the oppos.  Within seconds he was given the mic and protected it with a brightly coloured hygiene cover with an action that was slightly unsettling!  Then he ripped into Ferry Cross the Mersey.  Brilliant!  There was no need for an audience, no expectation of adulation, simply enjoyment of the pleasure of singing.  And he was good too.  Sandra followed with a Snow Patrol song, Chasing Cars, and Seamus crooned to One, Twice, Three Times a Lady.  I swear they each had their own supply of different coloured microphone covers!  Aside from really enjoying their singing and the memory jog of the older songs, the feeling that I recognised was one of hope.  There is every reason to carry on doing what you enjoy for as long as nature allows you.  I also admired their lack of self-consciousness, or their ability to overcome it.  That was the one thing that was stopping me grabbing the microphone to do a rendition of Thunder Road, the only song for which I can remember the lyrics!  It was clear that they were all settling in for the night as I departed.  They were jokingly saying that they had driven me away but I hope they believed in my sincerity when I said I had so enjoyed listening to them.  Amazingly, it was still only seven thirty as I pushed my way past the security guy on the way out, wondering what his night might look like if the current clientele kicked off!

I woke the following morning to air dried clothes and gratitude that I don’t have a tendency to sleepwalk.  The early morning view was no less spectacular through my still open window, and it was something of a wrench to pull myself away from it.

Happily, the weather was good again as I dragged my luggage to my place of work for the day.  On arrival I heard that trains from the south were not running out of Euston and that other travel through London was compromised as a consequence.  Some of the group that I was working with had returned home so that an event that was intended as face to face switched to a hybrid format.  We also agreed to start a little late to allow those who were delayed getting to the venue.  I wondered how to adjust our programme which intended to focus on creating space for conversation and noticed a temptation to make the programme more ‘efficient’ by removing the freestyle, emergent aspects of it.  It was only a passing thought, as I instead chose a path of ‘let it flow and see what happens’.

As a consequence, when we were all convened in our various locations I pursued the intention of inviting each participant to tell a story about an object that said something about them that might well be unknown to their colleagues.  As these stories unfolded, I was struck once again with the power of memories and how in sharing them there is an impact on the storyteller and their audience.  Objects included dancing shoes, a childhood electronic keyboard, pictures of sons and siblings, photographic images to share with loved ones far away, a paint brush, an image of a family home and business, a glass sphere containing a scene of mountains and cherry blossom, and a photo of a virtually convened outdoor walking group.  The stories spoke of passion, culture, and relationships.  They drew on contemporary experience and on memories, offering an opportunity to experience what was the same and different between members of this group of unique people.

My point in sharing this is how much there is to learn from our small experiences, the ones that fill the gaps between those activities that might be entered into real or metaphorical diaries:  a train journey, the experience of being in a new place, a walk from A to B, listening to people taking pleasure from singing, hearing stories being shared between people who both know and don’t know each other.  If we choose to notice these smaller experiences, they have the capability of helping us understand ourselves and our world a little better.  Each of them will change us ever so slightly.  I was a different person on the day of facilitating this session from the person who had travelled up on the train the day before.  My choice to talk about the impact on me of looking out on the view through my open 16th story bifold doors is a very small example of this truth.

If you are interested in exploring the stories that are holding your attention in a coaching partnership please go ahead and get in touch!