My Last Visit to Waterloo
Waterloo Station is not a place that I’ve visited much. Admittedly in the first few years after I started as a freelance programmer, I did use it quite a bit for short journeys to places like Epsom, Cobham and Guildford, but once we moved to Suffolk, I rarely needed to use the station. C and I did go to Paris on Eurostar, but even then we parked in the car park undearneath and sneaked in.
My last visit was in 2001, when I took a thousand Al Stewart CD’s from Bury St. Edmunds to his manager, who’d taken the train up from somewhere like Basingstoke. I was to collect a Banker’s Draft in return after our meeting at around twelve.
I had visited a client in Borough High Street and afterwards I was to see another in London’s Chinatown, just north of Leicester Square. I had actually driven, as there was no Congestion Charge and parking was no problem in any of the areas I was to visit, if you stayed less than an hour on a meter.
I was a little early for my meeting at Waterloo, so I parked the car on an empty meter and decided to fill the time by making a few phone calls. For some reason, the radio in the car had been switched off and as the phone was not hands-free, I couldn’t put it on anyway and use the phone. I needed to phone C about something, but try as I might, I couldn’t remember her mobile number. Even now, after the stroke, I can still remember, every phone number, I’ve ever used regularly. I tried other numbers and even they were blank. I just thought I was having some sort of brain problem, but as all my other functions were correct, I felt it was just a function of getting old.
On time, I arrived at the station and swapped the CD’s dor the draft. Al’s manager had to get back, so quickly and surprisingly for me in a silent car, I set off across the river for my next meeting. I parked in the underground car park in Chinatown and walked to the office to have my meeting.
Only then, when I entered the office and saw everyone clustered in earnest fashion around the television sets did I realise that the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York had happened.
You can argue what you like about this, but once I knew of the ghastly attacks, all of the numbers returned to by mind. Rupert Sheldrake and others have argued that a knowledge field exists. Perhaps, it does!
Saturday, when I ook the train to Portsmouth and like that fateful day in 2001, it was September 11th. Nothing happened in the station, but I did read Robert Fisk’s excellent article in The Independent about our woeful, vile and vengeful reaction to the attack. When someone or something hurts you, you have to fight back in a constructive manner, so that it doesn’t happen again. Loose your rag and be vindictive and you loose your one weapon, your sense of thought, reason and intelligence. As an example,my biggest protection against another stroke, is to change things, so that I reduce the risks and also to question everything I do, to make sure it is right.
Blair and Bush failed to do that! This was profoundly stupid, as they had the sympathy of the whole world after the attacks. But what did they do, they attacked Saddam Husein, who a few years before had been their friend.
And what did a crazy American pastor want to do on Saturday? Burn the Koran! As I’ve said many times, you don’t burn books, you read them! And when you’ve read them as many times as you can, you pass them on to someone who might enjoy them or learn something! Failing that, you may recycle them to make more things to read!
The Anonymous Widower 
I had a hospital appointment, and since the hospital was on my way to Liverpool to collect daughter for the weekend, I planned to go straight from thehospital to Liverpool. As I was driving to the hospital, I heard a newsflash that said a plane had crashed into WTC in NY. It was a private hospital, so they were running to time, and as I walked up the stairs to the consulting suite my consultant was outside his door, and his first words were “did you have your radio on”, I said, yes, there was something about a plane crash in US, and he said there had been another one, it was a terrorist attack – the second one happened between my getting out of my car and up to the suite. Everyone in the place was stunned. I listened in stunned slience as I drove to Liverpool after the appt and when I got to Liverpool, it was deserted, and my daughter and her friends were watching it all on TV.
That evening I was by chance at a church meeting in the home of a lady from US – she was insistent the meeting went ahead – the actual church was opened for a prayer vigil. I stayed up all night, talking to US friends who had friends and family in NYC and didnt know if they were safe or not.
Comment by Liz P | September 12, 2010 |