Hymn

Back on Track

We’ve been home a week and already S has a multitude of infectious diseases.  Travel into the deepest darkest jungle, no ill-effects whatsoever; go two miles down the road to an expensive nursery and it’s as though they are dipping the children in agar-filled play pens.

The kindergarten called this afternoon - S is poorly.  T was already on her way.  I left work too.  A bit excessive, perhaps, but another week of baby-disrupted sleep has left us all a bit fried and a sick child seems to need as many helping hands as possible.  I left at 2pm.  Still, I had enough time for a relatively relaxed journey to the station. 

No reason, no good will and no tolerance will excuse the fat Chinese family for blocking the passageway as they complimented each others’ shoes, the gnarled old man for breaking the ticket machine by force feeding it his bus pass or the young mothers who ground the escalators to a halt by sliding their babies down the rail.  I fought through them all.  It seemed that everyone in the system was conspiring to stop me getting home.  Not that I’m paranoid, you understand.  I expected fate to dump a circus troop of acrobats and performing elephants in my path just to round it off.  In the end it didn't have to:  I arrived at the station two minutes after my train left.

I waited sullenly forty minutes for the next one.  All I wanted was a train going from A to B, dropping me off at C on the way.   

As I boarded the train, something niggled.  Unusually, I checked:

‘Excuse me.  This is the train going to B, isn’t it?  And calling at C?’
“Yes sir”  replied the attendant with her plastic smile.
‘Calling at C?’
“Yes” then silently “Retard.”

I sat.  Something still didn’t feel right and it wasn’t just the chewing gum on the seat.  I could hear the hoofs of disaster rumbling in the distance.

I missed the announcement about the destination:  a grunting oaf decided to squeeze into the seat next to me when it was patently too small for his fat arse.

I panicked.  I got off the train. 

I ran the length of it to the guard.  He blew his whistle while I was a carriage away.

I shouted, ‘Is this the train to B?  Calling at C?’ 
“What?”

The doors started beeping.

‘C’ I screamed.

The doors started to close.  I jumped back on.

The train ‘manager,’ previously known as a guard, welcomed us on board.  This train wasn’t going to my station at all.  In fact, it was going to sail past my town and travel for another forty miles before stopping.  Fucking great.  I’m sorry but fucking great.

I had a blazing row with the ticket inspector who wanted to charge me for the extra distance.  Wanker.  I am not an aggressive man but seriously, I thought about punching him just so they’d stop train.  A chat with the local constabulary and I’d still be home earlier than trekking pointlessly into another county. 

It didn’t come to blows.

I watched despondently as my stop passed in a blur.

Thirty minutes later I got off the train.  With unerring predictability, I had missed the hourly train back by five minutes.

Please insert a string of expletives here.

S had gone to bed by the time I got home.  My rush back had taken more than five hours.  At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic, I drank a bottle of red wine.  All by myself.  And life felt a little better, albeit a bit more wobbly.

Commodity

In true traveller style, we hadn’t spoken to each other for the duration of the journey.  The ragged old man with the odd collection of teeth sat opposite me lost in his own thoughts as I was in mine.  As I stood up to leave, he said “hello.”

“Ah, it’s a good train this one.”
‘It is.’  I agreed politely.
“I usually catch this one back.  And the 11.50 in the morning.  It’s the best one from Preston.”
‘Is it?’  I asked absently.
“I make the trip every couple of months.  It’s a long two days but it’s worth it.”

Oh God, I thought, I’m about to have another one of those conversations where they assume I know what they’re talking about.  That or I’ve been mistaken for a KGB spy (an easy mistake to make) and this is the code word initiation.

‘I bet’, I said, slightly nasally so that it might be mistaken for a Russian ‘No.’ 
“I go for the commodity.”
‘You do, do you?’  I knew it.  I knew it.  I swear they lay in wait for me.
“Build up my stocks, you know.”
I nodded sagely hoping to buy some time. 
“Well, it’s only £9.50 a go, so it’s worth it.”
‘Of course it is.  That’s good value, isn’t it?  Always good to get some change from a tenner.’ 

I found myself starting to ramble, using that tried and tested strategy of pouring words out to cover an obvious lack of understanding.

He’s talking to me about drugs, I thought.  Quite loudly on a public train.  As though we know each other.  Good, I thought.  Great.  I am talking to a geriatric drug dealer.

“Yes, I think Belgium is a lovely country.”

Belgium?  Belgium?!  Surely you wouldn’t go to Belgium for drugs?  Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Eton maybe, but Belgium, surely not.  I could feel my grasp on the conversation slipping.

‘Belgium, yes.  Belgium.  Hmmm.’  What, in Heaven’s name, would one travel to bloody Belgium to collect?  All I could think of was the statue of the pissing boy.  But in £9.50 packs?  My head began to swim.

Then I had it.  Chocolate!  He must mean chocolate.  Of course, he almost certainly didn’t mean that at all, but it was good enough for me.

At least it would explain the teeth.

Remote Control

It is 7.23am.  The sane world is trying to sleep.  I am trying to join them.  It is impossible.  I am on a train. 
A single broken phone call pierces the silence.
“Is it plugged in?
“It’s connected by a black wire that goes in the back.  Can you see a black wire?  Can you see the plug?
“Is the socket switched on?  The switch needs to show red.  At the top.  Next to the plug.  On the switch.  Yes.  Red.
“Is there a green light on the front?  No not on the plug.  On the television.
“It’s not red?  Green, right?  Okay.  Try the remote.  Press Standby button.
“Do you remember the button I couldn’t describe to you last time?  Use that one.
“Yes the one that looks a bit like a lollipop.
“Has it?  Good.  See you later, Darling.  Bye bye.”

Train Talk

There were two of them.  But one was only really an excuse to stop the other from looking as though she was talking to herself.

“There’s more people on the train now than when we got on...

“It’s getting lighter... “There’s lots of countryside here...

“It’s really quiet, isn’t it?  Look there’s someone trying to sleep.”

Then they ate a family packet of scampi-flavoured fries.  One of the most repellent smells known to man.

It was 7.30 am.

It was going to be a long day.

Puff

We’ve been suffering quite a lot of wind recently.  It’s quite disturbing.  I couldn’t sleep last night, such was its ferociousness.  Made the windows rattle.  Still, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Now I’m the last person to suggest that there’s something slightly wussy about pampered Southerners who’ve never worked down a coal mine, on a trawler or indeed done anything more stressful than choosing between a skinny latte or mochachino but tonight I did wonder if perhaps too many of them were wrapped in cotton wool. 

It was still a bit gusty, I grant you.  But they stopped the trains.  You know, trains - big, hundred tonne, armoured metal boxes that run on rails.  Stopped the trains because it was windy.  I ask you.  Windy.  It was a bit blowy not a bloody nuclear firefight.  Poor little trains.  Not wanting to risk going too far North.  Into the dangerous wild.  With its scary-wary wind.  Better to stay close to home.  So, they crept just 50 miles out of the Capital before scurrying back to their fluffy warm beds.

That meant an equally long rescue from T.  In our little car.  It was a bit like dragging a matchbox on a piece of string through a waterfall.  At midnight.  In pyjamas.  Now, that was a cheery journey home, I can tell you.

Waiting Rum

I travel so many miles on the railways I might as well be an engine driver.  Most of the time it’s pretty good; this week it’s been horrendous.  At least once each day in the last three days, I’ve found myself stranded at stations having missed connections because of faulty trains.  Never mine.  Always the one in front. Never the one behind, damn it.  If it was mine, I could dismiss it as Just Typical and feel ever-so-slightly guilty for jinxing my fellow passengers.  But with my carriage faultless, this is a particularly sadistic form of inconvenience - the poor souls on the broken loco don’t even know that the person to blame is sitting a few miles behind them.  And so it is that I miss the Once in a Blue Moon connection.

Now I’m not sure which rules apply to British railway stations but I’m pretty sure that they defy most the of the laws of physics.  Light cannot penetrate them and time slows to an imperceptible crawl.  They induce a heaviness that is only equalled by the gravitational pull of a collapsing star and they are among the most depressing places known to man, second only to my Great Aunt Mary’s Front Room.  The waiting rooms are the final refuge of the desperate, the destitute and the deranged.  Usually there’s one of each.  Including me.

In traditional English social gatherings, it is customary to keep as much distance as possible between you and the fellow guests.  While the man talking to his coffee cup and rocking gently seemed to understand these conventions, the drunkard smelling of urine didn’t.  He was very keen to strike up a conversation.  I’m not entirely sure but he seemed to want to chat about ya-bloot-sen-a-ticket-fer-noboo-n-neebee.  We chatter amiably enough, albeit one-sidedly and punctuated with growling, for a little over half an hour before he fell asleep on my shoulder.  Thankfully, it was only a further twenty minutes before I had an excuse to move and leave him dribbling contently on the ripped seat.

I eventually fell through my front door only a little later than if I had walked the hundred or so miles.

Doctor on Call

“I’m on the train, so I need to be discreet” she boomed across the otherwise silent early morning train.  “I have a patient who needs some results picking up.”  Everyone is now awake.  “She’s the business woman who lives in Didsbury.  Works for the accountants on Smith Street.  You know, the one we prescribed sleeping pills to.  Husband left her.  Now under Dr Sharma.  Had tests for, you know.”  She hadn’t lowered her voice, so none of us was straining to hear.  Someone is pretending to snore in a desperate attempt to remind her that there might be other people around.  “Oh, come on, you must know who I mean.  Terrible, terrible business it was.  You remember - all came out about eight weeks ago.  Look, you’ll find her file under S.  S for Sherwood.”  I’m sure the recently separated accountant, Mrs S*******, from near Manchester and who’s fighting off a nasty infection will sleep much more soundly now.  Thank heavens for the medical profession.

Scallywag

You might not agree with using them but there’s a good reason that stereotypes exist.  People just seem to leap into them, wallow in them like pigs in shit.  Like the man on tonight’s train.  In his dirty white trainers and hooded top under a jacket.  And his stagger up the aisle and the reek of beer.  And his comical back and forth up the carriages.  He deposited an unopened pile of Virgin magazines and asked if I’d look after them, he wanted to know what team my neighbour supported, three seats down and he wanted a cigarette, out of sight I heard him request a light.  He tried to secure a reduction from onboard shop for a can of lager, all right then, a Miniature, how about a cup of tea?  He didn’t want one anyway, apparently.  He had a pressing need for the toilet that was entirely unrelated to the emergence of the ticket inspector at the other end of the compartment. 

His friend had his ticket, he’d already shown it, he’d lost it, he’d lost his wallet, he’d been robbed, got on the wrong train, was getting off at the next station anyway, was being harassed, didn’t care, had rights, didn’t want to be touched apparently when confronted by staff. 

For the rest of his truncated journey, he roamed our carriage, penned in by staff at either end.  He managed to solicit a can of Carling from another slightly worse for wear passenger and having given up all hope of a negotiated settlement sat smoking a cadged fag, beer in hand.

Thankfully, never an organisation to mis-prioritise or overreact, the Warwickshire police sent eight officers in four cars to ask him to leave the train at the next station.  It did at least give him a larger audience for the complaints about his treatment on board and more chances for a lift home.