I may have blogged about this before, but I will say it again: reading should not be attempted while walking. I have a very bad habit of combining the two activities, which on various occasions has resulted in:
- crying in the middle of the footpath because I had just read a particularly moving poem;
- walking straight past a large sign into a patch of very wet cement (the workmen standing next to the sign just looked at me incredulously as I lifted my head from the page)
- standing on an escalator for five minutes or so without noticing that the escalator was not moving. People were pushing past me to get up the escalator for the entire time. It was only when one of them laughed out loud that I noticed I was stationary.
It still hasn't entirely cured me. I just find the written word so deeply alluring, I find it very difficult to hold an unread book or a newspaper or even a bill in my hand, and not start perusing it - even if I'm running for the train. I would like to think that is evidence of some profundity on my part, but the sad reality is it doesn't have to be quality literature - when I walked into the cement I was reading the phone bill.
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2 comments:
Lots of laughing reading that - especially the escalator. I hope you don't read and drive too.
You sound like Laetitia. She would read a book on the walk home from the bus or train—even at or after dusk with almost no available light! I'm not sure how she got home some days.
But then, I suppose I can't really comment. I'll read anything in front of my eyes if I don't have something more important to do with them. Even shopping receipts over lunch (because they happen to be on the table), or other people's watches on the train, or…
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