When you’ve retired to the middle of nowhere to live off the fat of the land and you don’t drive, your activity options are severely limited.
There’s mucking out the chicken shed, downright torturous during the current heatwave. If you’ve ever inhaled the aroma of sun-baked chicken shit, you’ll know what I mean. Then there’s watering a multi-acre garden using hoses that have been enthusiastically re-engineered by hounds, leaving one soaked from head to toe, questioning one's life choices.
But perhaps the most uncomfortable activity of all is taking the bus to Dublin to visit friends. The bus itself is comfortable enough, but when you’re as smugly slim as I am and only occupy half a seat, you become an irresistible magnet for every oversized passenger in the county. On they trundle and down beside me they plop, sprawling and spilling over onto my seat. And they always bring a picnic.
I’ve never quite figured out whether they carry food because they’re fat, or they’re fat because they carry food everywhere they go. Yes, I could place my bag on the seat beside me, but I consider that the height of discourtesy.
I’m old enough to remember when people could get from A to B without clutching a coffee, a fizzy drink, and one of those new-fangled wrap things. Nobody fainted from hunger or died of thirst. Imagine that!
In all my born days, I’ve never eaten on a bus or in the street. It simply isn’t seemly, and I am the epitome of etiquette and decorum. I haven’t got an inappropriate or insensitive bone in my body.
If I were king, outdoor eating would require a table, and snacking on public transport would carry the death penalty. In fact, I might go full airline mode with passengers weighed on entry and excessively portly persons obliged to purchase additional seats.
Only kidding. That would be insensitive.
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Posted in response to galenkp's weekend experience
prompt asking ' What activity in your life would you say you're the most uncomfortable doing and why? What could you do to improve that situation?
The images are mine
