Nicole's time on a wet bench

Today I went and sat on a bench in a park as an experiment to see how it feels to sit a bench on my own and why someone else might want to do this.

After sitting on a bench for 10 minutes, I soon released it wasn't exactly how its made out to be in films. There were the typical Cliches such as dog walkers, chirping birds and the odd runner But I was expecting an elderly lady to come and sit next to me and start nattering about her day or at at least someone walking past to say "Good afternoon" but there was nothing, there was hardly anyone around. 

While I sat on the graffiti covered bench all I could think about was how wet and cold it was, as well as panicking about the several dogs which were roaming freely on the park. However once the dog walkers left and the sun started to come through the trees and the birds were chirping, the park seemed quite peaceful and I found myself thinking about lots of other things. I can see why someone, especially an elderly person who might live on there own, would come to a park and sit on a bench. Its a chance to get out the house, people watch, relax, have a minute to yourself and think.

Overall I quite enjoyed my experience sat on a bench until it started to rain. 

Here is a list of films I looked at while researching cliches of parks:
- The Park Bench 
- La La Land 
- Forest Gump
- Good Will Hunting 
- 500 Days of summer 

As we've been talking about cliches a lot in meetings I also researched cliches about the elderly and how films stereotype them as our main character is an elderly woman. In a lot of films it seems like the elderly:
- Aren't very good with the technology
- They say whatever they want 
- They're stuck in their old ways 
- Always grumpy
- They fall asleep mid conversation 
- They forget others peoples names
- Women tend to die in their sleep 
- Men tend to die of a heart attack 


Here are some films/ programs which I looked at, which are examples of some of the above cliches: 
- Second Hand Lions ( Not very good with technology)
- Christmas Carol  (Set in their old ways) (grumpy)
- Titanic  (woman dies in her sleep)
- The Golden Girls (No filter)
- The Simpsons (Falls asleep mid conversation)
- UP (grumpy)

by Nicole