Long, Long Corridor

When I'm doing medical roleplay I spend quite a bit of time hanging around in corridors, waiting to be called in for my meeting with the student or doctor or nurse or whoever.

I generally look at my brief for the role. Even though by that time I generally know every bit of it, I always re-read it in case there's some crucial bit of information that I've missed. I don't think that there ever has been, but I like a last look just in case.

After that I sit around nervously for a while. I'm always nervous before doing a roleplay. If it's a simple and straightforward one, then I'm not very nervous: if it's one with lots of accurate facts to remember, or that I know will need a lot of emotion, then I'm generally much more nervous.

The ones I find the most difficult are the ones where, as the character, I have to have bad news broken to me, because I want to make my reaction as real as possible. Real, of course, in this context, doesn't always involve bursting into tears - I hate it when roleplayers burst into tears just because they can! - it involves the most genuine reaction possible to both the news and the way it's broken to me.

Anyway, once I've looked at the script, and sat around nervously, then the next thing I generally do is to take a photograph of the corridor where I'm waiting, because I always have my camera with me, of course, and I'm always rather intrigued by corridors and their strange way of being not quite anywhere. (I'll stop right there before I get into Pseud's Corner).

Here are some where I waited recently:

somewhere in Manchester:

somewhere in Leeds:

and somewhere Very Secret Indeed with lots of signing needed to get in: I was told it has a nuclear bunker underneath!

And then, after taking photos, if I still haven't been called in to the roleplay, I start thinking about things and I often start with my friends and relatives.

As I've told you before, I sometimes dream in verse. I dreamed about sitting there, in a corridor, waiting for a roleplay, thinking about people, and woke up with this:

Long, long corridor
Corporate blue
I'm thinking of you, and you, and you
And you, and you, and you, and you
Long, long corridor
Corporate blue

No, not the greatest poem in the world, I have to agree with you. But, for me, it sums up hundreds of hours, over the years, spent waiting in corridors.