Help and Endurance

This is another drawing I did for 'The Showing Journal', a little while back. I haven't done much drawing this week I'm ashamed to say. I went to Guildford on Sunday for training and brought back more art stuff than I ever thought I'd be able to manage carrying. I was nearly right. It was quite an adventure. I managed to get onto the Waterloo train at Guildford and sat on my art stuff in the cooridoor as I knew I'd never fit into a seat without blocking up the aisles. We started well. Until we made an unscheduled stop at Surbiton. This was because there was a fire at Waterloo and all the trains had been stopped from going into the station. At this point the train filled up with passengers trying to get to Waterloo but having been stopped from catching other trains there. There was about half an hour of people getting on and getting off until everything was so jammed packed no other movement was possible. The train eventually started moving again and two men at either end of the next carriage decided to have an altercation about who could move where and who wasn't going to move at all. A man behind me commented that the more he was around people the more he loved his dog. Everyone in our area laughed and agreed. When we stopped at Waterloo, I threw everything from the train onto the platform in a heap so others could get out quick. The man who made the dog comment offered to help me. We tried several ways of making thing easier to carry but it was futile. I couldn't face the stairs at Waterloo into the underground so he helped me to find a taxi and I caught the underground from Tower Hill again. A lovely man helped me to get everything down the stairs that were there and put me in the right area on the right platform to catch my train. I successfully managed to get on my next train but then got off at the wrong stop and delayed the train by getting everything stuck in the door, then I had to wait for the next train to get me to where I wanted to go. At Stratford (because Liverpool Street was shut for engineering works) another lovely, kind man helped me with loads of stairs and got me onto the right platform and then another lovely man actually put everything onto the train for me, across what looked like a massive canyon of a gap by that point. I think it can only be my stubborn streak that managed to get me that far, that and the very gratefully received help from the lovely men I came across. In Ipswich I went to catch a taxi because I couldn't face walking half a mile down the road to where I'd parked my car. The queue was so long I thought that I'd try and endure it. It took half an hour of stopping and starting to get to my car. Everything was slung unceramoniously into the back of the car and I drove home and couldn't even face getting it out of the car that night. I've ached now for three days and have numerous bruises that have come out on my arms and legs. It could have been so much worse though if I'd not had the help that I did. Next day I was incapable of even holding a pencil as I had the beginnings of blisters on my fingers. What a palava.