Too Close For Comfort

OtherHalf did not want to walk today so I set off alone. I headed down the path next to the BlogTrain. No surprise: the weigh scale we saw a couple of days ago was gone. In its place was a pair of white surgical gloves, strewn on the ground.

I continued down the path. I could hear raised voices. A man in his mid thirties was shouting, mostly swearing, at a woman at the train station. The woman was tall, slim, dressed in beige colours with her hair covered in a shawl. I’ll omit the F words. The man was initially haranging the woman from a red car parked at the side of the road, but he got out of the vehicle and walked towards her. He was shouting at her to go away and take her drugs with her. “Get out of my neighbourhood,” he yelled repeatedly. A few people at the bus stop stood and stared. She appealed to them for help and said that the man was stalking her. Everyone ignored her.

She then approached three BlogTrain attendants who were standing just inside the station. They could not have failed to hear the shouting. She didn’t ask them for help and she made no mention of the man behind her. She asked them for 25 cents to use the phone. The man had backed off at this point and he drove off. One of the attendants gave her the money and she made a phone call. I’ve seen drugs been bought and sold at the station before. I wish the BlogTrain officers would patrol outside the station as well, and arrest people in conjunction with the police.

I continued on around the block and up the path on the other side of the BlogTrain. There’s been a lot of construction with a new path being laid wide enough for a vehicle. I think they are going to put a line down the middle so that one side is for cyclists, the other for pedestrians. I walked along for half a mile, crossed the bridge then turned for home. Out came a plastic bag and I collected garbage for the remainder of the trip. The number of cigarette butts I see is incredible. The nicotine in butts is very harmful to wildlife, causes them all sorts of intestinal problems. Cigarette packets were very popular today. But the piece de resistance today had to be a coat, a sweater and a pink purse, all lying together in a bundle under a bush. Not quite the kitchen sink, but darned impressive. At first I thought perhaps someone was living rough there and I looked around for a sleeping bag but couldn’t see anything. I checked the purse, nothing in it. There’s no way I could bring this stuff home, to recycle or to turf, as it was soaked through and far too heavy to carry.

OtherHalf was watching the Rose Bowl Football when I got home. I regaled him with the goings on at the station. It is strange. There are drugs being bought and sold not one hundred yards from where we were sitting on the sofa. We carry on our lives, making soup and eating cookies. I don’t lose sleep over this. I feel safe in our home. But I want to make a difference. I can pick up litter but that’s not going to have any effect on the level of drug trafficking in the neighbourhood. I can understand the man getting angry and yelling at the woman – assuming she was a drug dealer. Maybe that should be me out there yelling too. I need to give this some thought. There has to be more I can do.