Down the Tube III

Eventually the slide did come to an end. I was disappointed that there weren’t various shelves with objects on to look at along the way, like Alice had seen. My landing was reasonably soft, fortunately and a cover slid quietly over the chute entrance. I think that at first I was probably relieved that there was no one there. The relief didn’t last long as I was soon preoccupied with how I was going to get out.

Explore isn’t really the word I can use as there wasn’t really much to explore. There was the mattress on the floor where I had landed and a table with a chair. The walls floor and ceiling were all the same faded yellow colour. It was difficult to distinguish where walls became floor and ceiling it was so uniform. I have never been able to work out how the light system works at all. I do know that the light changes as I ‘behave’ myself. If I please whoever is controlling the room the light becomes more comfortable to my eyes. At one end of the room was a partition behind which I found a toilet and shower. Any necessities appear to arrive through a hole in the wall system but on first view I could not see any form of hatch. I spent a long time studying before I caught objects arriving and departing.

I have plenty of time just for observation.

Reading all kinds of books

Peter from Worldman left an interesting comment about reading all kinds of books. A few years ago some people I know were clearing out their book shelves. They had both worked in New York for the United Nations before they retired and had a pile of English books which they passed on to me. There were books of many different styles of writing and I decided that I would make an effort to read them all, even the ones that I thought I wouldn’t enjoy. I loved them all and they opened up even more avenues of reading for me. The only book I didn’t finish was a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. I will read it one day.

The second point that Worldman’s comment brought to mind was about re-reading books. As I’ve grown older I’ve revisited many of the books I enjoyed in the past, some of them several times Its been interesting to see how my ideas about the characters has changed as my own experiences have made me hopefully wiser. I recommend this exercise to everyone – I think that you would be surprised!