We Walk Straight So ...

When I was a boy at primary school, one of the activities that we would do in the playground was stand side-by-side with a friend, always another boy and cross over our arms so that we were locked together. We would then march around the playground saying loudly in unison ‘we walk straight so you’d better get out the way’ (enunciated so it sounded like ‘we want straitsa you’d bettah get out tha-way!). Generally we did not actually walk straight we would simply march into other boys who would often pair up just like us so they could march into us and the whole thing would descend into what was then termed ‘a bundle’. Where this ‘game’ originated from I do not know, presumably from the place most physical games did especially for children for whom kicking a ball around was forbidden as none of the playgrounds that I used while at primary school had less than one side which was a row of windows and in some cases three sides were windows. Why I was suddenly reminded of this game which I cannot have witnessed in over thirty years was as a result of trying to walk down a street in London.



I heard on BBC radio that officially Britain has become more polite than in recent decades, but as yet I have to see any evidence of this and one case in point is how difficult it is to move around as a pedestrian. Places like Oxford Circus and Leicester Square in central London have always been difficult not only from the numbers of people but the fact that many people on the street have no idea where they are going and/or have their attention distracted by everything that is going on around them. However, even in suburban areas of London, places like Ealing or Harrow or Richmond, you find it difficult. This is because on the pavement, as on the roads, no-one seems willing to yield even a few centimetres nor to wait even a matter of seconds to allow someone else to pass. I suppose if I see people in cars forcing their way out of side roads into the main flow of traffic and bullying people out of lanes, I should not be surprised that I see the equivalent of such behaviour on the pavement, especially as unlike car drivers, many pedestrians are young people. A television advertisement for an insurance company shows pedestrians behaving like cars and says we would not behave like drivers when walking. However, they are in fact wrong and most people do behave precisely like that replicating the scenes they show in their advertisement.



I am not going to go on demonising children and teenagers. However, it is probably unsurprising that witnessing what their parents and other adults do it should seem to them to be ‘weak’ to move even a fraction of a step. It is exacerbated by the fact that unlike older people, children and teenagers often travel in groups, and all want to walk side-by-side. Going along the pavement, even walking through pedestrian areas I find myself being pushed to the sides, hard up against buildings. No matter how large the space is, groups of pedestrians spread to fill it. Where I live during the week has broad pedestrianised areas but I find myself dodging between four or five family members or students strung out for a couple of metres across the space.



When I have run out of space and am squeezed against a shop window, even this does not seem enough and I get a tut or a sigh as if I have done something wrong as one person for a matter of seconds has to expend the effort to step around me. My journeys are lengthened by this constantly being squeezed to the side, having to pull my jacket or shoulder bag in, even having to turn side-on so the people can get by without having to adjust how they are walking. Often rather than be pushed into the wall, I am compelled to step into the road with all the risk that that entails. The difficulty is not only that the people I encounter have an utter unwillingness to move even a little, but they seemed exasperated that anyone should be walking in the opposite direction to them; they also tire of people moving too slowly in their direction too as she witness from the complaints about the elderly and disabled or parents with the off-road pushchairs if they are not proceeding fast enough for the bulk of pedestrians.



It often not the case that the people who are unwilling to move are aware that you are liable to collide with them. I have written before about how people are cut off from the world by their mp3 player and their mobile phone: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/08/mind-out-that-child-might-be-wearing.html
 Ever since mobile phones were invented no-one has seemed able to stand still while using them, I guess hence the name, it is not the phone but the user who is in fact mobile. The thing is now, with smartphones that there is so much to look at on the screen that using them takes the full extent of the owner’s vision. Yet, they do not stop, they keep ploughing on, gazing intently and fingering the screen of their phone, assuming that everyone will navigate around them. These people can be slow moving, giving you time to get out of their way. However, to me it rather seems an insult to the blind that people with sight do not use the faculty they have been blessed with. Maybe in the future mobile phones will be constructed with white sticks extending from them. Certainly someone needs to invent facilities that alert the user to other bodies within a certain proximity or even to allow the user to see in front of them as they are looking down at the screen, through having a camera in the top of the phone rather than on the back.



Despite all my ailments I can move freely and sufficiently speedily to avoid colliding with the ‘we walk straight’ pedestrians. However, this is not the case for all pavement users. The elderly, disabled people, people with small children or pets, are a lot less manoeuvrable and it appears that the message to them is simply that they should not be out walking at the times when ‘normal people’ wanting to walking in strict lines to get places. The issue of the we-walk-straighters is that they are symptomatic of a broader problem, the manifestation of the Thatcherite belief that there is no society just individuals and families (or their equivalent on the street, gangs of friends). Why it is so difficult to move around a British town on foot or by car is because so few people these days understand that to travel in an urban area is to become part of a machine or even an organism, one that has different components moving at different speeds.



I once saw an art installation which consisted of a video the artist had shot at a junction in Vietnam where five roads met. The range of traffic was incredibly diverse and included pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds, rickshaws, motorbikes, cars, vans and lorries all on the road rather than the pavement. The video was shot from an apartment overlooking the junction. What was startling was how soothing it was to watch. This is because despite all the variety of the traffic the different elements flowed so that no-one collided and no-one even held up someone else. To me it looked rather like blood flowing around the body. I am sure there are accidents and arguments in that city as anywhere but it is apparent that the Vietnamese in cities often far more crowded than London, had the necessary attributes to make such incidents rare rather than happening almost every minute.



To march through as a pedestrian is to disrupt the traffic ‘machinery’ to the extent that it causes jolts to the system, tensions and upsets. Things move far more smoothly when people look ahead, have patience and work in co-ordination with others. However, none of those attributes are now valued in British society so as a consequence we have all the huffing and puffing and the arguments, the need to squeeze against a wall to avoid a confrontation and the stresses that all this brings.

Mind Out! That Child Might Be Wearing An Ipod

When I was growing up there used to be a sign on the back of ice cream vans with a hand held up saying 'Mind Out! That Child May Be Deaf'. The implication was for speeding motorists that a child coming away from an ice cream van might not hear their engine and so be hit by them. In fact I do not think the child needed to be deaf to be put into this kind of risk. Generally too many people speed in residential areas and also children who have just got a treat are usually so focused on it that a meteorite could be crashing on to their school and they would not notice. There was a very good radio advertisement a couple of years back which outlined this principle. It played the sounds heard by a young child, an elderly person and then a teenager approaching a road. Of course those who you might think most at risk, the child and senior citizen were aware of the traffic, the teenager on their mobile phone walked right into it. This is why, if I could have found the basis for it I would have done one warning about the use of ipods and other MP3 players.

I know this problem has been around ever since they invented the personal stereo, as far back as the Walkman in 1980. People being cut off from the outside world (though often the people around them were very aware of what they were listening to) was a problem then. However, I think the reason why it has got worse is because the ear pieces now disappear entirely into the ear (rather than sit on the outside bedded on a piece of foam) and also that the person's sight is also occupied. With an ipod the user constantly seems to be tweaking with the settings or reading the tiny text on the screen and if they actually put their ipod away they pick up their mobile phone and start texting someone or flicking through photos on it. What you end up with is someone who is in a bubble in which their two main senses: sight and hearing are detached from everything around them. They are more cut off, I believe, than a deaf or blind person ever was.

I have encountered personal problems with this. My mother is going deaf, which is unsurprising, given that she is 70, but she has hearing aids and we make sure we speak slowly and clearly and look at her when we speak. For herself she takes care when she is out and about, knowing that she might get caught out by something approaching out of her line of sight that these days she might not hear. So, there is a working relationship between the (partially) deaf person, those around her and the environment through which she moves. Contrast this with the woman in my house who now seems to be plugged into her ipod from the moment she awakes. I can appreciate that rather than trying to interact with the world she might want to cut herself off from it. I have no problem with people disappearing into their music. This has been common even before music was recorded and grew in the 1970s when home hi-fis reached good quality and people would lounge back and wear those huge headphones. However, they were tied to a location and if they wanted anything they got up and found you. With the mobile technology, there is no indication if the person is plugged in or not. Unless they are listening to it so loud that you can hear it too, you have no indication of what volume they have it at. Consequently the woman in my house, who is in her mid-30s, bellows through the house like an elderly person would have done thirty years ago. You have to go up to her and tap her to get her attention as you would with a deaf person you wanted to have a sign language conversation with. In addition, being cut off so much makes her highly impatient. When she shouts out a request she cannot hear the response such as 'Coming', 'Just a moment' or 'I'm in the toilet' or whatever so she assumes no-one is responding to her request at all and just shouts more. Unlike with deafness she can switch this thing off so if a few minutes later you go to her and speak loudly, she goes 'No need to shout', again raising tensions in a house.

I am sure this is replicated across the world. I suppose it is more challenging dealing with a mature person as you somehow expect a teenager not to respond or not to hear you. With someone older you tend to think, that if they want to interract with you then they will make the effort to equip themselves to do that. We end up with one-sided conversations in which she asks me something and then does not hear or mis-hears the response. At best I can get her to remove one ear piece, but I find that incredibly rude because then I feel only part of her attention is on what I am saying, especially galling as it is generally when she is asking me to do something. The ipods are almost welded to people, and as with mobile phones, to suggest they might put them down or take them off or even turn them off seems like a personal offence as if you asked them to remove their underpants or bra. The 'other' world provided by these devices is clearly more vital than the current one they are physically in (and do not get me started on people receiving text messages or phone calls during meals).

Even more hazardous is when these people go out on the streets. In contrast to real deaf people, they seem to make no effort to compensate for their impaired senses by being more attentive to what is going on around them. I drive through a number of towns that have universities, some of them have two and if I spot any students on the pavement I slow up as they are likely to simply wander out, especially at traffic lights or crossings, assuming that everyone else is going to stop to let them pass like some sacred animal. I turned into a side road leading to a car park the other day and an ipod wearing student using their mobile was walking in the middle of this side road and was totally oblivious to me being behind them. I had to proceed at their slow walking pace until we reached the broader area of the car park (and where has this fashion for walking on the road rather than the pavement suddenly come from? Is it due to fear of being mugged on the pavement; ironically cyclists of all ages seem habitually to go on the pavement, as noted in 'The Guardian' a couple of weeks ago a woman was aghast at the suggestion she cycle on the road; how topsy-turvy is this country becoming). Even coming out of shops, you often find your way blocked by someone just standing there oblivious to anyone around them. If you dare touch them to ask them to move, well of course that brings down a wall of invective on you, so in the UK we hover in that ineffective hesitant way until the chance comes up and the person moves on. How can city centres function with this sort of behaviour.

As you know, I am the first to complain about bad driving. However, safe driving can only work if all users of the road and pavement do their best to be alert of what is going on around them. Many pedestrians are deliberately detaching themselves from the real world for one more removed. However important the next track on your playlist is or responding to that text, it is less important than preventing yourself becoming another road casualty. We will not even get on to the issues of politeness and not being an obstacle when around town, just think about keeping yourself and others alive.