Disturbing.

Yesterday there was no Elizabeth line to Maidenhead, so I decided to take an Uber. I had to wait across the road from the station for it ( why do all the new station forecourts have no taxi access?) and so I made my way to the old , sorely missed, Parade Delicatessen, now a Starbucks. I was completely nonplussed when I saw a young girl, kicking, shouting and swearing in the unused doorway. She. Was being talked to, comforted, restrained by a man and a woman, but she wouldn’t stop. No one was hurting her, or insulting her. The general feeling was of trying to help. Someone must have called the police because there were two constables hovering and trying to move the onlookers on. I stood a distance away because I didn’t want to be seen gawping. I was of course , but trying to be discreet. Anyway, I had to wait. The yelling and swearing continued; she clutched her mobile phone with the fury of a tigress mother, and was beginning to lash out. She was obviously very distressed. Eventually the police intervened, a man and a woman, and very assertively but kindly, they managed to persuade her to sit down. At this point a crowd had gathered, and this is the disturbing bit: they were filming on their mobile phones and muttering about police harassment, etc etc. One was a young mother with her child in a pushchair – she obviously needed to be somewhere else, but couldn’t tear herself away from videoing the scene. What was she going to do with her little film, I wonder? I am quite upset still by the whole situation.

5 comments on “Disturbing.”

  2. It boggles my mind that a crowd of people all feel the need to film people in distress and those trying to help them. Unless the police were physically abusing her, there was no need, and even then, only one recording seems necessary. Very sad state of affairs…

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  3. When we had a couple of cats, I found it amusing once when a cat-fight occurred in our yard, and both our cats ran to the window to watch. I figured, to see who wins, which is probably important information for a cat. I think this gathering around human crises is built into our natures–probably a positive thing most of the time, but the cellphone recording is a strange new thing.

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  4. A few years back I was walking across the end of the bus stop/taxi rank between the west and east sections of Poznań Główny, I noticed a couple walking towards me, nearer to the front of the building than I was. I judged this couple to be older than me, not a lot older but older than I was.

    As I passed them, the woman let out a sort of moan and fell backwards against the building, her husband dropped the bag he was carrying and tried to catch her, but she had slumped against the building and was slowly sliding to the floor.

    I was torn between looking, that is to say, gawping and continuing on my way but I stopped, I had passed them by now, and looked back and soon realised that I was the nearest person to them. The woman had gone into some sort of fit and was gently shaking and making gurgling noises as she collapsed into a puddle of rainwater.

    It took me a few seconds to register all this. The poor guy was crying;”Ania! Ania!” and trying to move her out of the puddle. He looked at me being the nearest person and asked me to help him – that much I understood clearly. Between the two of us we managed to move her out of the puddle and laid her on the paving slabs, by which time she had stopped the fitting but was unresponsive. By now others had seen what had happened and began to gather round, one appeared with a blanket and wrapped it around the woman as best they could, another telephoned for an ambulance. After a suitable period of time and unable to add to the aid already being administered, I took a step back from the commotion of people now gathered and quietly moved away.
    I too was disturbed for several hours afterwards…

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