The Art of Waiting

Where am I? Oh! I'm in the waiting room of the Ashford Dermatology Clinic. I'm with my mum who is having some things removed. I don't know it yet, but I will be here for quite some time. Like fifty five minutes! But I am resourceful and decide to fill my hour with ART.

First I choose some literature to peruse. I choose a National Geographic, dated January 2009, a Little Golden Book called Barbie Soccer Coach, and finally, another National Geographic.

The first National Geographic is full of amazing photographs. Bulging-eyed red-mouthed sweaty black men in the Peruvian Andes digging for gold, unpaid for thirty days out of thirty one, because on the thirty first day they're allowed to keep all the gold they can bring up in a four hour shift. In the photo they look like men who are thinking, Shit it's only day three.

Every photo in the National Geographic has a wow factor. There is one with such an excess of wow factor that they have folded it in half. When you open it up you see Kronotsky Volcano, which is somewhere on the Kronotsky Peninsula in Russia. Wow! In the foreground are black rocky mountains streaked with white snow. The volcano itself is a beautiful heart-melting blue, wreathed in soft grey smoke. To the left of the volcano, delicate pink clouds; to the right, blue-grey clouds; to the extreme far right, WOW! a pile-up of stacked lenticular clouds. Stacked lenticular clouds! I must google that one day. But in fact I can see what they are. They look like a stack of flat pink macaroons. WOW!

It is ten to three. I've been waiting twenty minutes. I turn my attention to Barbie Soccer Coach.