Pavement Waves

The pavements of Vieux Lille are, like the streets, mainly cobbled. Very quaint and attractive but sometimes narrow and difficult. Even one with all its cobbles in place can be anything but flat and a hazard to an unwarily-placed ankle but, unlike in the case of 600mm paving stones, one missing cobble can be a barely-visible bear-trap. Stick a whole foot down one of those at a brisk walking pace and you’ll be using the end of your tibia as a makeshift heel for the rest of your days. Other hazards include the cyclists who don’t want to be inconvenienced by the fact that the narrowness of it all means that literally everywhere is one-way in the old town so they use the pavements instead and then, of course, there’s the ubiquitous “poo”, far trickier to spot on cobbles than on flags or tarmac.

It’s this fact which leads me on to the notion of “Pavement Waves”. Despite certain early successes in avoiding the poo, (see Trains & Turds), I also had some spectacular squelches in the first couple of months. On one occasion, I had a serious and personally-critical meeting with someone quite senior in the organisation and, 20 seconds shy of the entrance doors, on a forecourt with no available grass or leaves etc, I trod ankle deep in a pile of fresh droppings which can only have been extruded by a dog-shaped donkey with a very high calibre arsehole, probably approaching the diameter of (and maybe even resembling) a bisected blood-orange. Having little time and no resources, I chose to give it as good a shake and “kerb-scrape” as possible and press on into reception. The floor was granite. My walk across it would have looked more in keeping if they’d been playing Ravel’s Boléro over the public address. The stench was so potent that……

Sorry! I got side-tracked! This isn’t the offering in which I want to explore the subject of “French Fido’s full English Breakfast”. I’ll get back to that another time.

So where were we? Oh, yes. “Pavement Waves”. I speak of waves of the cerebral kind. A sort of understanding which possibly allows interaction between us as inanimate objects (to wit, dog dung on this occasion) and also, more notably, between us and other humans. In respect of the former, I’ve developed, without much effort, the ability to avoid this particularly unpleasant obstacle uncannily well. The Waves took a few months to “take” but, now, I don’t have to think, I don’t even have to look. Those turdvibes just pulse through me throughout every sortie and I’m convinced that they’re now so honed that I could cartwheel through Battersea at 2 am and still go home and make pastry without washing my hands. If I could transfer this skill from dogshit to landmines I’d be worth a fortune in Africa and Vietnam.

So, yes, that took a few months but my powers eventually became strong. The problem is and has always been in relation to the other kind of Pavement Waves. The ones between human and human. The timing and results have been completely different. My realisation and understanding of the wave situation between me and other pavement users was immediate and my level of mastery of it has improved not one bit in a whole year. I’ll describe it.

For decades before, I’d been used to a situation where, if I found myself walking straight towards some bloke coming the other way along a pavement, then the waves between us, (both of our interacting waves), would silently, invisibly and instantaneously negotiate. Mine would inform his of my likely actions, changes in direction and pace. His would do likewise and then our respective pavement waves would return to each of us, re-entering our bodies through whichever orifices they normally use and, after subliminal, unspoken and unseen corrective action, piloted by our two sets of waves, the gentleman and I would pass each other neatly by. Not a brush of shoulders nor a visible deviation on either part.

Now, however, as much as I’ve made myself as capable as could be expected of communicating with my hosts in terms of messages written or spoken, my PWs have singularly failed to be arsed to learn to communicate on any level whatsoever with the PWs of my opposite numbers here. Every single time I walk the streets of Lille or Roubaix and, frustratingly, along the corridors and up and down the staircases of the offices, I bump into every third person coming the other way. The adjustments made by both sets of PWs just don’t work at all. If he adjusts to his left, my PWs send me to my right and so we bump or, at least, someone needs to stop. Even if we both stop, it’s still no more clear who’s going to dance around which side of whom from a standing, face to face start. If, as I’m walking diagonally across a square in the centre of town, from one corner to another, some woman is crossing between the other two corners (at 90 degrees to my route), it might look, from 50 metres away, as though our collective paths and velocities will see us bump heads in 20 seconds. Again, the PWs go to work between us and the adjustments are made, visibly and clumsily but those adjustments are false and futile and we bump heads all the same.

It’s weird. It’s like the interaction between the poles of magnets. It hasn’t improved one bit over the year and I don’t expect it to. It’s not based in the language as none is exchanged (apart from “after-the-fact” apologies) and it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the idea that we drive on the left and they drive on the right etc. I have as many right-side incidents as left-side ones. No, it’s just that we’re different. We think differently. Our minds are predisposed to calculate and prioritise differently and, as much as it can be a little embarrassing from time to time, I actually really like the fact that this problem exists and persists!

It seems to lend weight to ideas that I’ve long held dear. It seems to endorse the notion of innate differences between peoples and I love that apparent confirmation! It sits well with my ideas of identity and national oneness. The fact that I bump into them and they bump into me is to be celebrated! It indicates that we are different and that embodies much of joy and excitement of travel, adventure and experimentation. Two things are clear to me from these observations.

The first? To my French hosts, whether a jury would decide that I bumped into you or that you bumped into me, It’s always my fault and I accept culpability with good grace! This is your country, not mine and my PWs are the ones getting it wrong, not yours! I’ll always say “sorry” or a translation thereof, irrespective of the specifics of the bump incident!

The second? There’s probably someone in several loopy local councils in the UK right now who’s considering making bumping into immigrants on the street a “hate crime”! Maybe some no-hoper from a Third World country is suing the council as the rights of his Pavement Waves aren’t being duly taken into account and he’s consistently bruised as a result!

Ah, PW meets PC! What great times we live in! Why doesn’t such a lawsuit seem at all difficult to imagine!?