“Can you help me please?”

Until I heard this phrase on Doctor Who last Saturday, I’d not heard this for a while. I’m not sure why. People don’t really ask for help any more. Perhaps they’re afraid of what the response will be. Well they certainly won’t be used to free an alien space craft from it’s earthly captivity!

It could be the news, there’s a lot of it about and depending on where you are receiving it, it can be quite frightening, but then again I suppose that’s the point. It also could be TV drama, that is also designed to scare the pants off you. But should it affect the way you live your life. I’m not saying that there might be positive effects but there are most definitely negative ones, like not asking for help for example.

On my daily ramble through Moorgate to work I see a lot of city folk wending their way into work. Some have been there for a while and are out for a no doubt well earned cigarette break. Others might be fresh from buying their morning mocha choca cappuccino latte or something. There are a few busy roads that need crossing before I hit the relative peace and quiet of Shoreditch but today, as I crossed one of the junctions there was a lady in a small hatchback who had broken down. Behind her were all the London favourites; white van man (in a blue van!), London cabbie and a red double decker bus. While she sat in her car frantically attempting to get the thing started she was confronted with a barrage of horns beeping and fists waving from the waiting vehicles behind her. Did she receive help from the cabbie, van man or bus driver? No she didn’t. Did she get help from anyone walking passed her car, and there were quite a few of them. No she didn’t. Even when I approached her with an offer to push her car across the junction, she declined, preferring to sit helplessly in the traffic than get a shove across the junction so she could sort her car out, out of the way of the baying throng behind her. Shame really, and I didn’t think I looked that scary. Maybe it was the 3/4 length trousers that put her off!

So to all of you people in trouble, where ever you may be. London is not full of lunatics who want to do you harm! Some of us are genuinely helpful people who would be happy to help you and your car across to the other side of the junction, and might even call the AA out for you! So next time you’re in a bit of a pickle and we offer you our assistance, why not say, “Yes, that would be lovely thank you!”