Trying Again!

With a bit of luck I should be meeting 'S' today. After the slight disaster last week when he forgot to phone me to tell me that he was stuck at home because of snow so wouldn't be able to meet me, hopefully today will be a little more successful.

I'm feeling a little anxious again today, but nothing like last week. I suppose that part of the reason that I am not so bad is because I know how to get to my destination this time, having carried out what turned out to be a dummy run last Thursday.

Considering that I am a London girl born and bred, I do find travelling about a very anxious experience. I suppose it is having spent more than 30 years away from London that makes me this way; at a time when I should have been visiting the hot spots and the super shopping areas that London has, I was living in the country, much of it in a small village. It's not just travelling in London that I find induces anxiety. I'm like it wherever I travel to, and at airports I am an absolute nightmare, not being able to stop looking at my watch or stay in a seat for more than five minutes at a time. This is all made worse by the fact that I have a thing about making sure that I am never late, so I always arrive anywhere much earlier than I need to so add to the problems of waiting at airports. I've travelled the world, very often on my own, and yet I still cannot stop being like this.

However, this morning I shall leave the house a little later than I did on Thursday and hopefully I won't have too long to wait for 'S' when I arrive in reception. I can almost hear his apologies for Thursday as I sit here typing this. One nice thing about today is that 'S' is taking me out to lunch to make up for Thursday, and I do think that this might make the meeting a slightly less anxiety-inducing occurrence. It's so much easier to chat over food.

Under The Clock At Waterloo

It was reminiscent of a 1940s film. A rendezvous had been made to meet under the clock at Waterloo at 10am this morning. The station was filled with people searching the boards to find out which platform their train was leaving from. There were greetings between those who had not seen each other for some time; there were partings as some set off on adventures or off to some far away place.

I was there, standing under the clock, waiting for someone who I had never met before. Someone with whom I had never spoken. Yet I did not feel as though I was meeting a stranger. I was meeting someone who over the last few months I had come to look upon as a friend. There was no newspaper under my arm, nor a carnation in my buttonhole. I had told the person that I was meeting that I would be wearing my new blue jumper; I hoped that they would recognize it.

This was going to be a first for me. I had never made such an assignation before, I was suddenly a little apprehensive and yet I was looking forward to this encounter. Thoughts went through my mind. Would we get on together? Would we find anything to talk about? We both had mental scars, yet this was perhaps what had drawn us together in the first place.

Today was the big day. Today, I was meeting There and Back.

I have to admit that we have been corresponding by email for some weeks now, and as she was making a visit to London we decided to meet and chose under the clock at Waterloo as our meeting place as so many must have done before us. We walked from the station to get away from the crowds and went to Starbucks for a mug of hot chocolate. And we talked, and talked and talked. For two hours we talked and covered a wide range of subjects, but the thing that we talked about most was our addiction. Yes, we are both addicted to studying with the Open University. We talked about courses we had done, and courses we were yet to take. We talked about families, and about other bloggers.

It is a strange thing, this blogging world. We often comment to each other about how we will never meet and yet we seem to have so many things in common. But for There and Back and I, we shall no longer wonder about the person whose blog we read, for we have met and we enjoyed each other's company. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we have already agreed to do it again some time. What was important about this meeting is that both of us find it difficult to meet new people and we are often uncomfortable in crowded places. Today, I think we both went some way to beating this fear and we have lived to tell the tale.

Just in case you may think I am speaking out of turn, one of the first things I asked There and Back was whether she would mind if I wrote about our meeting in a post. She said 'No', and that she had thought of doing the same thing. So look out for a post on her blog in the days to come.