Back to my free form pseudo poetry for now. This describes an event that happened a few days ago, when I was on the train to London from Edinburgh.

 

I am usually not a fan of children while travelling

They are perfectly cute when at home

But while on the road

They scream and shout and whine and cry

Worst of all though

Are the cellphones and the Ipads and the computer games

Beeping with Candy Crush and Temple Run and god knows what the next fad is

To be honest, it is not just the kids

But it is the kids I pity

The kids who miss out on so much

The joy of the outdoors, of board games and books

 

With a mix of pity and irritation

I sat across a family of four

A four hour journey from Edinburgh to London

Armed with Advil and a lot of grit

Waiting for those contraptions to come out

And the beeping and bickering to start

Yet, to my surprise,

The only clinks I heard were those of Connect 4 tokens

And the pop up wooden chessboard

Was the closest thing to a contraption

And instead of burying his head in phone texts

The boy wrote his sister a letter

 

I won’t lie

They screamed and fought all the same

But these children gave me something more

 

For in them, I saw my own childhood