Vulnerable

On my lunch break yesterday I walked to a mainline rail station to go and buy a train ticket for my mum. I was walking along minding my own business and as I walked into the station, a woman punched me really hard, and deliberately, in the arm. I turned and looked at her, someone I hadn’t even been aware of until she hit me and she just looked at me and walked on. I think she was some homeless woman, but I have absolutely no idea why she hit me.

I just carried on and went and bought the ticket, but it sort of rattled around in my mind. It wasn’t so much that it hurt both when she hit me and for a while afterwards, but more that it showed me how vulnerable we are. I wander around London without much thought to the likelihood of something adverse happening. I take precautions – I don’t flash money about and that sort of thing. But it just made me think that you can just come across people who for no reason whatsoever just do something violent or aggressive or in some other way unpleasant.

I tend to try and keep myself to myself anyway when I am out in public but what happened yesterday bothered me. I went to Tesco briefly last night and one of the shop assistants wasn’t looking where he was going and picked up a crate and turned and bashed into my trolley. He said sorry and I just didn’t say anything in reply because I just didn’t really want to engage with people. I’m not in some complete state over someone having hit me, I think I just wanted to get to the end of the day without really having to engage with anyone though. Mind you, I mentioned what happened to someone I work with and he said to me “Oh that’ll be because A will have shown your photo to all the local yobs so that they will hit you every time they see you”. At least that would be an explanation I guess!

Anyway, it’s the weekend ahead and I am off to stay at G’s for once. I’m not always that keen on staying at G’s because it’s a shared house – but the landlady is away (although the cats are not) and so maybe it will be a bit more relaxed than normal.

So, good weekends people – and be careful out there.