I was returning very late one evening from a night out with friends when as I changed trains in a very busy station I noticed a very little boy walking through the station with his father, (I presume).

Nothing in noticing the child was a source of alarm to me, only a feeling that it was way past his bedtime.

Old feelings of being out late as a child surfaced in my mind, and the excitement of the darkness and the streetlights and the feeling of tiredness crowding my little head on those rare occasions.

The child walking through the station, dwarfed by rowdy and intoxicated adults, rushing for their next train or the taxi home, is an image for me of the sense I often have as an adult of somehow I am in an environment in which I do not fit in.

For me, it is an anxious feeling, which in recent years, I have learned to recognise and overcome by continually assuring myself that I belong.

I am a human being, entitled to the space I occupy within my body, within my family, within my community, within the workplace and within the actual space that my physical presence occupies as it moves from place to place.

The little boy, out past his bedtime, was safe in the company of his father, and no doubt would soon be at home tucked up in bed.

I was on my way home too, safe in the knowledge that I belong to those who love me, I have no need to feel scared because I too am safe.

My next blog will be: Just be with it

William Defoe