Reading

I took the train down to see my girlfriend  and stay with her before we go on holiday to Austria. I find that normally the train ride is quite difficult because you're essentially sitting there and waiting till you arrive. Even with a magazine or a newspaper, it's tedious. I had decided to buy a magazine for the train in the hope of occupying my mind for at least some of the journey. On this occasion however, I passed a discount book store (The Works) and picked up a new copy of Bret Easton Ellis' outspoken 'American Psycho' for £1.99. I thought that this was amazing value considering Amazon don't do as good deals as they used to on even used books as the minimum delivery cost is £2.80 now (14/08/11). This was part of a 3 for £5 deal on books and fiction works.

I started reading from the moment I got on my first train (it's a long journey) and I started to appreaciate the appeal of reading a book over say, a newspaper or a magazine. With a newspaper, one skims the text and can't really get involved unless the subject matter is particularly cultured or concerned with some gripping theme. With a book, the mind is constantly building the environment described in the book and working hard to mould freeform thoughts into a coherent scene. This mental activity pulls you in and immerses you in the book. It is this drawing the reader into the book that makes time fly by. I tend to block out the environment around me when I read as I focus so heavily on the book and what's going on in the story. This makes for some telling offs when the missus tries to talk to me whilst I read. But this induced ignorance is exactly what is required for travelling because then one doesn't notice the other people on the train or the time. This is what makes reading books such a good use of one's time whilst travelling. The pages turn, the mind races and time rushes on. Before you know it, you're at the terminus of your journey and a large portion of your book is read. I'll certainly be reading a book on my return journey.

Ladybirds

In recent weeks, there's been an invasion / massive increase in numbers of ladybirds in my area. They are everywhere, probably due to it being breeding season or something like that. They're all over the ground, walls, fences and they seem to like travelling by bus too as they're all over the inside of the local public transport, calmly walking along.

A funny thing happened the other day when I visited some friends in Hull. I was travelling on the Humber Flyer, a bus which links Grimsby and Hull. A ladybird was mooching about on the sill of the bus window and it crawled onto the woman sitting next to me. She thought nothing of it and blew the creature off her hand. The ladybird came back. She placed the insect further away on the other side of the window sill. The bug returned. The lady continued to remove the bug from herself and it kept coming back (perhaps the ladybird liked her hairspray or perfume? ). This continued for a good third of the bus journey and it ended with the woman alighting from the bus after cursing the ladybird for coming back repeatedly. It was the funniest scene I've witnessed in a long time.