Who do they think they are?
Last week myself and another researcher were showing a group of pupils from a Special Educational Needs Unit in Aberdeenshire, round the Scottish Parliament. We were in one of the Committee Rooms and Davie was explaining about mikes and lights etc when in walks a guy who doesn't even wait for the sentence to finish before telling us he has "this room booked". "OK" says Davie and attempts to finish the sentence. "For a Westminster meeting" the chap adds. "Righty oh" replies D and again attempts to finish the sentence. It was clear we were agreeing to leave. "Defence matters" continues this po-faced, humourless and incredibly rude man.
Anyway D finished his sentence and added on another completely superfluous one - just for good measure :-) So we left approximately 30 seconds after we'd been asked to. And as we walked through the door I smiled and nodded politely to the waiting "important people" as did some of the pupils. Did we get a smile back? Nope! We got stiff frozen faces and a bit of bristling which was presumably because we'd dared to step into THEIR meeting room and hold them up for 30 seconds.
I'm delighted to say the children, aged 13 to 15 were far better behaved and I had to smile as one of the group pointed out that "it's not their parliament anyway, it's ours and they're just visitors".
Anyway D finished his sentence and added on another completely superfluous one - just for good measure :-) So we left approximately 30 seconds after we'd been asked to. And as we walked through the door I smiled and nodded politely to the waiting "important people" as did some of the pupils. Did we get a smile back? Nope! We got stiff frozen faces and a bit of bristling which was presumably because we'd dared to step into THEIR meeting room and hold them up for 30 seconds.
I'm delighted to say the children, aged 13 to 15 were far better behaved and I had to smile as one of the group pointed out that "it's not their parliament anyway, it's ours and they're just visitors".


-DH (Comment this)