You Thought You Were Having A Bad Day

I think it was watching Caught on a Train which made me realise that I should relate the following which happened earlier this week.
I’d been working reasonably late, and admit that I popped into the pub for a couple of drinks after work. This is the new look Midas Touch which has been refashioned by simply removing all the pictures from the walls, gaffer-taping up any rips in the leather-look seating in the back, removing all the video games and replacing of many of the draught drinks with cheaper substitutes. They’re going for the backpacker clientele.
However, that’s not relevant to the story. I then popped into Burger King for a quick meal, and was sitting there reading the end of my book when I became aware of a young backpacker further down from me who was sitting at her stool with her head in her hands. I must admit that I basically ignored her, and thought that either she was flat-out exhausted (she had a massive rucksack on her back a smaller one that was also packed attached to her front), or maybe had had an argument with a boyfriend.
I carried on munching, but then a woman, who I can only think was Spanish given her accent, came over, and I realised that the girl was truly in tears. You then realise that there really are good people in the world, as she came over to her, asked her what was wrong in very broken English, for the girl spoke English. I couldn’t really hear what she was saying but I wasn’t really reading my book now. The next think I knew was that the Burger King staff had brought her over a selection of free food. But now the Spanish women were off.
I tentatively decided to ask if there was anything I could do. Now I’m always very aware that this sort of thing is tricky. Not just that I could be useless clot in the situation, but that it could very easily seem to someone who’s vulnerable that as a bloke, I’m trying to take some kind of advantage.
She told me that she was Canadian and that she’d arrived in the country from somewhere like Slovakia where she’d been working all summer. That morning, her brother’s discman had been stolen or lost at the airport, and now, to make matters worse, the shopping she’d spent most of today putting together, had all been lost in a shop somewhere. She said that she didn’t eat junk food, and that she’d come here because it doubled as an internet cafe, but that the internet part was closed. This wasn’t the first internet cafe she’d found this to be the case for. She needed to get on the net to get a phone number from a Hotmail account.
I volunteered the services of our work computers, and we headed off there. Again, I wanted to be really careful here, as I’m aware that leading strange women at their most vulnerable off the beaten track after darkness could be easily misconstrued. Fortunately, there were plenty of cleaners at work, as well as a security guard.
The missing shopping had possibly been left in the Covent Garden branch of Marks & Spencer. I tried calling it, but with no luck. She shopping seemed to consist largely of dance clothing, since the girl was heading off on a dance tour of the States and Brazil within days of getting back – that explains why she didn’t eat junk food!
But a useful A-Z showed her where she was going, the best route for getting to Heathrow in the morning (Heathrow Express if you’ve got the cash and are in a rush), and the whereabouts of her cousin’s house where she was going to stay tonight. Felt a bit useless to be honest, but there’s not much I could do.
Somehow I managed to spend an hour or so with her and not either pass on my own name or get hers! So I can only hope that she got her shopping back and that M&S mail it on for her.


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