Life at Pace.

I was sitting on a wall today watching an elderly man cross the pedestrianised High Street in Uttoxeter. He was walking at an estimated speed of around half a mile an hour. There was another elderly man approaching from his left on a motorised scooter which was doing an estimated quarter of a mile an hour. There being around thirty yards of distance between them, I judged there was little danger of a catastrophic collision.

The elderly man on foot evidently thought otherwise because he stopped and waited. And waited, and waited… Eventually the motor scooter crawled slowly by and the man on foot continued his perambulation, even though his elderly wife was still trailing in his wake and hadn’t yet caught up with him.

If that had been a Monty Python sketch or scene from Father Ted it would have been funny. And even in real life it was funny, but there was also a touch of pathos mixed in with the humour.