Since I’ve returned to Edinburgh from the (I’ve now discovered) exceptionally broad pavements of Warsaw, I keep getting stuck behind the oblivious trudging of barely-strolling walkers.
Especially with Welcome Week and various promotional events taking place across the University campus for new and potential future students, slow walkers are horrifyingly inescapable. They arrange themselves in the most perplexing ways, like in the middle of a pavement during rush hour, or cutting in front of you just to start moving at a comically-glacial pace.
Some mornings, I can’t even get through to a University building without some lobotomite stopping right in front of the doorway. You don’t even study here! Why are you meandering about right in front of a clearly busy entrance? Please, I’m trying to get to class. I understand that you might be lost, but there are so many walls around you can stand beside while you figure it out. You don’t have to spin around in the staircase to the library, where you keep getting in everyone’s way.
Edinburgh’s pavements aren’t really great to begin with. Lovely city, but horrible pavements. Along certain paths, I’m already forced to squeeze between strangely-situated banisters, walls, and buildings while descending another dangerously-steep hill. Why do I also have to figure out my way around the three people that have blocked the way in front of me, because they’re too busy pausing every few steps to take pictures of the surrounding buildings? Yes, it’s pretty here. MOVE!
The art of walking in a row is lost on many nowadays. Apparently everyone just has to walk next to each other, all the time, even along the narrowest of passages. I know it’s not marked out on the floor, but— believe it or not— pavements go both ways!
Maybe I’m too impatient, but is it really so hard to be mindful of how much space you’re pointlessly taking up? Just move off a bit to the left, thanks.
Image by Mark Chan for The Student.
