The Eric Wroolie Blog

Overpass Experiences

Snow in England this morning

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This morning the people of Southern England were greeted with a couple of inches of snow upon waking up this morning. This made travelling to the Didcot from Wantage pretty difficult. The roads were gritted, but the pavements were still covered in snow and ice. The car park and pavement at the Fox Hall car park in Didcot were unmaintained. Apcoa has to be one of the most rubbish companies I’ve dealt with since being in the UK. That’s saying a lot. I’m sure I’ll moan about them on a later post.


I don’t like walking on snow. I’m from California and have never really been used to it. All it ever brings me is misery.


When I was a teenager, during my senior year of high school, my family moved from beautiful San Diego to Springfield, Massachusetts. We moved just before the snow began to fall. It was a cultural experience getting used to things on the other side of the country. In the last year of my mandatory education, I attended Springfield Central High School.


I was moving to a new high school in the last year I was supposed to attend high school. While my new fellow classmates were discussing how this year would be the ‘best in our lives’, I was trying to make new acquaintances and spending a lot of lunchtimes sitting at the table of loners and losers (the L&L table, I guess).


It was December. I had been in school for just a few weeks and, unlike my former life in California, I found that girls actually liked me. I had this rumour going around that I was the California guy. Even to me, this sounded pretty good. I had this mystique around me. I tried to open my mouth as seldom as possible?even sitting at the loner table was good for my image. Maybe it would be the best year of my life.


In Massachusetts, it snows a lot! I can remember my wet hair freezing while I waited for the school bus in the morning. But I was getting used to it. I started to like the snow covering everything. Everything was white and new.


One day, while leaving the front of the school and walking towards the school buses, I walked across an un-shovelled bit of pavement. I like to make new footprints on a fresh patch of snow. I was wearing an old Marines overcoat that I got from a thrift store and walked my mysterious-loner walk (hands in the pockets of my coat, kind of shuffling more than walking). I looked really cool. I had left my past. I wasn’t the geek people went to elementary school with. I was the new cool guy.


As I walked across the snow, my feet flew out from underneath me. I couldn’t get my hands out of my coat pockets. My chin hit the pavement first, with the rest of my body falling behind.


In a split second, there were roars of laughter from everyone. I heard them while laying flat on my face. The entire school had left the building and everyone was laughing at me. I hope they are all working in petrol stations now. I reacted how anyone would?I jumped to my feet and kept walking like nothing had happened. Just checking the pavement.


I walked for the bus a little faster than before. If I can get there before the embarrassment actually hit me, I wouldn’t risk having my eyes well up before everyone. That would look real tough?to just start crying in front of everyone.


The Florence Nightingale of the school ran up beside me as I walked. “Are you okaaaay? Are you alright?” I could tell she was always the first one to a crisis to offer her superficial sympathy. I’m just that kind of person. I’m just so compassionate.


“No. I’m fine.” Happens all the time. I tried to outwalk her. “Just forget it.”


Then she screamed (louder than I would have liked) “Oh my God! You’re bleeding!”


I looked down and saw that my sweatshirt and coat were covered in blood and reached for my still-stinging chin. I was bleeding?a lot. Nurse or bus? “Just forget it!” I ran for the bus?grabbing a tissue from my pocket (I’d already wiped my nose with it throughout the day) and covering my chin. She let me go.


My brother was on the bus and immediately asked me if I had gotten into a fight. When I told what had happened, he sympathetically laughed at me.


When I got home I found the cut was pretty deep and probably needed a stitch, but I just put a plaster on it. For the next week, I looked like I had cut myself shaving every morning. I wasn’t the cool guy at school anymore?at least I didn’t feel like it. I just waited out the last few months of high school before joining the Army.


I still have the scar and it makes me have rubbish stubble.


So this is what I think about on the rare occasions we get snow in the mornings. I’m sure it will be melted by tomorrow?maybe even for the trip home. I walk very carefully. Now, I don’t think that the people waiting for the train at Didcot will openly laugh at me if I should fall?and I don’t have any street cred to maintain?but I still walk carefully in snow with the heavy fear of public humiliation.


I don’t like snow.

Jumping from the Moving Train

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Yesterday, I had a very strange incident on one of the First Great Western slamdoor trains from Paddington.

Last night, when my train arrived in Didcot Parkway, I stood up, grabbed my overcoat from the overhead storage and left the train. Same routine every day.

As I was walking off the platform, I put my coat on and realised that my keys weren’t in the pocket and that the pocket had a hole in it. I put my hand down the hole to feel around the bottom of the coat, but couldn’t find the keys. I checked the other pocket and found that my gloves were also missing. In a split second, I realised I had put on someone else’s coat. The train was still there so I sprinted back to the train. Which coach was it? I took the best guess.

I shoved past several people to get onto the train and ran back to the place I think I was sitting. I was sitting in the middle of the coach. I was terrified the train would leave and I would be on my way to Swindon–“Sorry kids, I won’t be home for a couple of hours. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I tore off the coat I left the train with and threw back into the overhead compartment. When I glanced back at it, my suit jacket was inside the coat so I had to jump up and get my jacket out of it. I could hear the doors slamming. The people sitting below these luggage containers were staring at me too. I could hear music and realised my headphones had come out of my phone and while I was running around, I they could all hear the music from the phone in my pocket. I was listening to David Lee Roth “Just Like Paradise”–how embarrassing. I fumbled my hand in my pocket and turned off the phone.

I pulled down a different overcoat from the overhead bin and turned towards the door, but noticed it wasn’t my coat either, so I threw it back. I checked one more before I found one that clinked like it had keys in it. With my book bag, my suit jacket, and overcoat bundled in my arms, I ran back down the aisle and towards the door.

When I got to the door (shoving past the same people I shoved past on the way in, but this time they stood to the side), the train was not moving–but the door was locked! I pulled down the window and hung my body out to shout to the guard. I waved my arms around and shouted “Stop!” There was no guard on the platform and I was largely ignored. Typical. I was on my way to Swindon.

Still, in a split second I figured we hadn’t really started moving yet and swung my leg out over the window. The train started creeping forward–but I was already committed to this action. I had one leg out the window but the upper half of my body wouldn’t fit out the window with all the stuff on my arms. A guy standing next to the door shouted, “I’ll hold your coat and throw it to you!” Made sense. I brought my leg back into the train and shoved my head out the window first and then brought my leg out. I was mostly out of the train and looking for someplace to put my foot. There was a tiny ledge at the bottom of the door I was able to stand on and get my other leg over. I was still over the platform and jumped. The man threw me my bag and coats from the moving window as I shouted thank you.

As my heart raced and I breathed heavily, I watched the train leave. A few people from the coach I just left were watching me out the window. I was amazed to find I had everything (coat, jacket, bag) and very relieved that the coat I grabbed really was my coat. I put my coats on and looked along the platform expecting some official to have a word with me or give me a fine. Nothing. I made it home in time to see my kids before they went off to bed.

When I first moved to England nine years ago, my mother-in-law told me that being American covered a multitude of sins. I didn’t have to worry about doing or saying stupid things since most English people expect it from me anyway. I tend to embarrass myself on a regular basis. Despite my putting on a suit and heading into the city everyday like a grown up, I tend to put myself into situations where I’m running around like an idiot.

I wonder if I’ll see anyone on this morning’s train who saw me last night. I was too frantic to get a good look at anyone. What they must of thought seeing me jump onto the train, run down the aisle to the tunes of David Lee Roth and throw coats around and take one before running back down the aisle and jumping out the window.

Two more weeks of the contract. Two more weeks of this commute. I think it’s starting to mess with my head.

Vegetarianism

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I’ve been so busy with my current contract and the damned commute that comes along with it that I haven’t posted an entry in nearly a month.

My big resolution this year is to become vegetarian. This was my resolution last year, but it only lasted 7 days. I’m on day 12 now, and doing well.

In the past year, I read too much about the meat industry and the health problems with eating meat that, although I still ate meat, I did so with a guilty conscience.

I’ve always felt that people who choose to be veggie must have strong will power and a little insanity. We are a country of meat-eaters (England and definitely America). I see this much more clearly now that I look at menu boards filled with things I’m not going to eat. That pasta looks good–but they put little chunks of chicken in it. That salad would be perfect if it didn’t have bacon on it. Vegetarians never have it easy.

Still, I could never figure out why someone would want to be vegetarian. I put them on a parr with those crazy people who break into science labs to free all the animals.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love burgers and chicken. As a teenager, I worked in McDonalds for 3 years and frequently ate all three meals there. My dad would refer to me as a carnivore. I was never much interested in vegetables on my plate and would often leave them there. I love meat and have always had fond associations of it. Some people rave about chocolate. I rave about chicken.

But now I’ve read more and seen more. I can’t do it anymore. Specifically, I know of two resources have had big effects on me. One is a book and the other an online video.

A very interesting book that has had a big impact on my way of thinking is The New Why You Don’t Need Meat by Peter Cox. This book explores our history of meat eating and looks at the way our consumption of meat has changed in the last 30 years or so. My big takeaway from this was the realisation that with such a huge growing population, the meat industry has had to resort to barbaric factory methods to give us the product we can now get whenever we want it. Despite the romantic vision that some farmer walks out onto his farm to butcher one of his animals (probably with a heavy heart) so non-farmers can guy it on the shelves, I know that animals are scientifically reared and butchered mostly by machines. I find it ironic that people who oppose cloning could support the meat industry. This book looks at a lot of the tactics used my meat lobbyists whenever a report on the current state of our meat comes out. It is an eye-opening book.

The second thing that had a real impact on me in the last year is a video created by PETA. It’s called Meet your Meat and is narrated by Alec Baldwin. If you can stomach watching this video and still support the meat industry, you’re a bigger man than I am. You can watch the video at www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=meet_your_meat. You can watch it right now.

I’ve never been one for idealistic causes, but I really want to stick with this one. I want to be vegetarian. Not because I want to lose weight. Not because I want to be more healthy. I want to be vegetarian because I think it is right.

I wish you a belated Happy New Year.