by Elisabet | Mar 5, 2009 | English Blog
Heard on the English news this morning that a 71 year old (or young!) man had been accused of reckless rollerblading. Marvellous! You couldn’t make it up, even if you wanted to!
Apparently he had been blading in his hometown for a long time but had now expanded his view and gone to another little town, where he had been caught on CCTV, blading down a pedestrian street. The footage shows how he swerves in and out amongst pedestrians and apparently people have felt threathened by his movements. Absolutely marvellous! I’m saying absolutely marvellous as I think it’s so out of the ordinary.
We often have set views or expectations of how people should be, children are expected to be or behave a certain way, teenagers another and so on. A teenager being accused of reckless rollerblading would have been more in line with expectations. Isn’t it fantastic when people make a mark, stick out a bit, surprise a bit, raise our spirits a bit!?
I had a big smile on my face when I heard and saw this on the news. They interviewed the man on TV, he had his rollerblades on and you could see how he was rearing to go the whole time! What joy he was displaying! He seemed to be having such a good time. And I don’t think he was particularly dangerous to his surroundings. I do think he broke the pattern of our expectations of a 71 year old though.
Good, I say! Break the pattern! Keep your “joie de vivre”! Do what’s right for you – as long as it doesn’t hurt others and the world around you. There’s nothing wrong in stirring things up a bit or staying away from stereotyping for that matter.
So now I’m wondering what I can do to break the expectations of what a 40+ mum with small kids and her own company should be like…..
All suggestions are welcome:-).
by Elisabet | Feb 5, 2009 | English Blog
Isn’t it wonderful how many different ways you can look at things? England has had a lot of snow lately and as parts of the country rarely gets snow the country and its people has had some mixed feelings about it
- Frustration about the snow chaos and the inability to keep the country going as a result of this – cancelled flights, stuck cars, closed schools and so on.
- Fantastic joy about the snow and the possibility to go toboggoning, throw snow balls, build snow men and igloos. (I saw an English family who had built an igloo in their front garden and managed to squeeze 9 people into it:-))
I used to live in Brighton for a number of years in the late 90’s and I remember it so well. The only snowy day each year (because that was typically what it was – one day of snow a year) there was total CHAOS. And the English give themselves such a hard time about how bad they are att handling the the chaos – how they can’t clear the snow, or de-ice the planes’ wings or stop skidding about. That’s not so strange, I think – why should they have as good snow handling capabilities as we do here is Sweden, when they so rarely need it? It would most likely be way too expensive and complicated.
No, I’d rather focus on the wide-eyed enthusiasm that so may Englishmen show with regards to the beauty and romantic aspects of the snow. I heard on the English news how there are now enough pictures of snowy locations to take care of Christmas card needs for years to come:-).
And just think how fantastic it must be as a kid to on the odd occasion not be able to go to school! Something that breaks the routine, and to be able to go outside and throw some snowballs instead (which you normally only see on film). I remember dreaming about that as a child – being snowed in or something! Wow! It never happened though…. still waiting.
Enjoy it while it lasts, I say! Next year you may be back to normal again:-)
