A face in the crowd

So - here I am, having taken early retirement from my job in Devon, and moved up here on my own to Glasgow, a city I had never visited, and knew little about.
A daunting prospect maybe, but looking around me today I see many familiar looking faces, huddled within a crowd, yet alone with their thoughts.

There are times when we all need our own little "personal space" - giving us time to reflect on what we have already done, and the days ahead.

I am lucky, for some say I might never have been here at all today, if things had gone a different way many years ago.

It was a routine allergy test, which just went wrong. I had one of those anaphylaxis type reactions and within minutes was "out like the proverbial light."

All I can remember was actually looking down on the Doctors and nurses trying to bring me round, and then feeling nothing but tremendous peace as I drifted in a sea of white, no fluffy white clouds, no gates, and no men with long white cloaks.

Then - it was just looking up at the Doctors and nurses, my time had not come, I was back in the land of income tax, television before Sky, and big red telephone boxes which were far too big to put in your pocket.

That was not the only time I escaped the meeting with the man with the long white beard (The big Issue seller outside of the pearly gates) - there was also the time I was shot in New Orleans, but there you go Marshall Mcloud, that is a story for another day.