Mind the Gaping Chasm
MONDAY: Just thought I'd mention my lunch because it's new to me. I've got a granary breadcake fresh from the bakery this morning with cream cheese and green olive-marinated tofu, with the usual veggies. It's very very nice. The only problem with a tofu sandwich is that when it's gone I feel like I could eat another one. And I'm not exactly the gluttonous pig type.
TUESDAY: Today lunch is my basic Wensleydale cheese sandwich, with my fruit container filled with slices of fresh peach, cantaloupe, clementine, strawberries, and raspberries. What a joy to behold: a vibrant orange and red melange. I'm hoping something -- perhaps the raspberries -- will inspire this week's blog. But my mind is still as blank as dry toast without Marmite.
Perhaps it's because my normal summer lunchroom -- the bland slightly stuffy staff room at the university learning centre -- is closed this week for refurbishing, forcing me to spend my 30 minutes of lunch in an adjacent building called the Atrium, where students and staff race up and down an open-plan staircase between 4 levels of cafe spaces. (The spiral-staircase effect is an illusion, or perhaps my own delusion.) I'm sitting in the carpeted section of the "Cutting Edge", under the cloudy sunshine penetrating the glass ceiling, with the roar of a hundred chatting and giggling students swirling around my head like a cyclone. Perhaps this week I'm actually destined to write about eating one's lunch in a university setting. Could it be true?
WEDNESDAY: I have the same sandwich as Monday. The same choice, I mean -- Monday's actual sandwich is long gone. And many more students are buzzing around, including a couple at the table next to me who are having a quiet but intense argument. I'm surprised to see so many students around the university in the summertime. This doesn't stop the university itself from hiring builders to erect new wings and to tear apart walls and flooring and ceiling tiles, leaving precarious piles of building and electrical debris everywhere. And several of the lifts are out of order, including the only one that goes to Level 1 where I'm working today.
Personally I find it charming. If this sort of summertime renovation were happening at an American university, the buildings would be closed, off limits to all students and to all but essential members of staff. And if it was absolutely necessary to leave a building open and accessible, there would be so many safety barriers and detours it wouldn't seem worth the effort needed to get to one's destination. That is one thing I find refreshing about the UK: it doesn't try to swaddle its residents in safety padding any time somebody makes a hole in a floor or takes a bit of wiring out of a wall. One could say this is because America is a much more litigious society, but the UK is starting to catch up in that area. I think it's more a matter of respect for the intelligence of the public. Obviously the vast majority of us do not want to fall through a hole in the pavement or experience the wrath of 10,000 volts coursing through our bodies. Those of us who aren't suicidal or severely self-destructive are at least somewhat careful around dangerous situations. If we weren't, there would be none of us left.
So give me your holes, your unguarded piles of lumber, your precarious craneloads overhead, your challenges. When I go back into the learning centre in a moment, I fully expect something else to have been torn up since my departure. On with it! If the stairs are gone and the lifts are all broken, it'll be fun to get out the rope. It'll make me feel like a kid again.
