"Do you mind if I talk to you?"
"Sure, what's going on?"
He looked distressed, as if he had been crying actually. Unlike him, never seen him like that
before and I thought, if ever, there was a time for listening to this friend of mine, this was it.
Just bite your tongue, no wise offerings, no incisive diagnosis, no putting on your Freud hat, just listen. He took a seat opposite me....
"Oh I know this might sound a bit derivative...of Sylvia Plath, you know crying in
a railway station and all that but I just got back from Stratford International...and I had gone
there to see my daughter...she lives by the Olympic Park there...and...and well, I had gone
there to resolve things with her.
."You...you see she had accused us of not being dutiful parents....I was outraged and I thought
I must resolve this. For it is our belief that we have been well... top notch parents..you know, get
A for effort in any parental contest. I know this is all a bit cliched but without any money we got those kids into the top universities, scraped and saved to give them a musical grounding...decades
of love and support...as parents should... when I look back it was a lifetime of devotion. What's
that line from the Tempest? '...daughter we have done nothing but in care of thee.'
Yet now she accuses us of a lack of parental duty.
She is having relationship problems again. (At this points he seemed distracted as if talking to her) "I just thought...oh beautiful, intelligent daughter who now sits opposite me.
Oh why do you shake and tremble and weep so. Is it because I am belligerent and heavy handed?
Sorry about that ,rambling After an hour and half of offering solace, conveying righteous
indignation. being overly assertive, as all parents throughout time do, have done and will do, .floundering to
find a sympathetic tone to stem her tears. We part, there is
a physical distance, her farewell embrace is a half hearted gesture, a duty. That is
unendurably painful. I recalled broken relationships of my youth. I traipse through the
Emporium for shoppers which is adjacent to the Olympic Stadium. Oh beautiful daughter, so
distant from me, so far away.
A roar erupts from the Olympic Stadium as I trudge down the stairs to Platform 3. to catch the
train that will take me back. On the platform, a policeman walks by with a sniffer dog. The dog sniffs the bench on which I am sitting, maybe it senses I am going to explode. The policeman
smiles at me. "Alright mate?" and heads off along the platform.
I watch the arrivals for the Olympics with their Union Jacks and raucous jingoism. Now I think of her and think of that tear strained meeting. Beautiful girl, I miss you. I miss you. And then...well
I just start to weep on...on Platform 3 at Stratford International."
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