Hymn

Lost

The phone rang and my heart sank.  We had travelled separately to an unfamiliar town.
“Hi Sweetheart.”  I chirped, being as upbeat as I could muster.
‘I don’t know where I am.’
“Do you recognise anything?”
‘No.  I’m in a town centre.  But I don’t know which town centre.’
Oh God.
“Can you see a big church?”
‘No’
“Can you see Tescos?”
‘No’
“The Leisure Centre?”
‘No’
“Okay.  What can you see?”
‘There’s a pub.  But I can’t see the sign.’
“Uh huh.”
I knew nothing of the place so my questions were effectively pointless.  To make matters worse it was a silent, empty and dark Sunday night.
“Do you know what street you’re on?”
‘Hold on, I’ll put you on hands-free and start driving.’
“Is that a good idea?”
‘What? You’re not very clear.’
“What road are you on?”
‘What?  I’m on Back Lane.’
It meant nothing.
‘I’m going downhill’
“Did you turn right at the fifth roundabout?”
‘Yes.  I think it was the fifth.’
“Do you think you could get back there?”
‘What?’ she shouted ‘I don’t know how to get back there.’
“Okay I’ll come and find you.” I proposed knowing full well the madness of the suggestion, me now on foot.

I found a hill and walked up it.  She was coming down.

Sometimes I’m relieved to see T return to the Kitchen Door after putting bird seed out in the garden.

Line

Tonight it was me trying to talk on the train.  Trying to have a conversation on the phone.  Trying to console my mum through the static and the interruptions.  Fucking useless signal.  Nana died at a quarter to four as I was on my way to the hospital. 

Up Your Nose

Now I’m all for alternative lifestyles.  Why, sometimes, I even buy porridge oats instead of Weetabix for my breakfast.  But I do object to having nihilism rammed down my throat.  There must be some demo going on Up North because tonight’s train was full of, I think the term is, Crusties.  Now I don’t mind the piercings (except when they’re in front of me at airport security) and I actually like the fabulously offensive tattoos (that always make my mother remark - ‘What will they look like when they’re old?’)  I can’t comment on the clothing given some of the appalling rags I troll around in.  And I’m green with envy for their hair and the fantastically ornate dreadlocks though I spend so much time shaking my head I’d suffer permanent lash marks if I were blessed with such tresses.  What made me and most of the rest of the carriage uncomfortable tonight was the smell.  Now, I smell.  Sometimes.  After a hot journey, on those rare occasions when I do something arduous and physical or when I’m playing some game or other.  And there was that 46-day trek through the jungle to escape the Colombian drug lords when I didn’t change my socks once but, generally, my stench is not a lifestyle choice.  But this man, I think it was a man, reeked.  He had that horrible long-unwashed pong about him: the smell of fusty clothes that sinks to the base of your lungs and stays there like mustard gas in the trenches.  It was a pervasive and fetid perfume.  Of course, no-one acknowledged it in anyway, although the businessman sitting beside him did shrink away as much as the seats in Chicken Class allowed, though quietly, as if he were slumping into slumber and the girl opposite developed a surprising cold and spent the journey sniffing through her tissue.

As I was leaving, I heard him, somewhat unconvincingly answer the unasked question to the remaining occupants: ‘It’s these trainers.  They make my feet sweat.’

Wild West

I think I’ve just been sitting on the oldest train on the West Coast Mainline.  Possibly the oldest in UK not pulled by a steam engine.  My carriage, delightfully described as a “Standard Saloon” had none of the niceties of post Great War vehicles: no stifling air conditioning and with seats upholstered with cardboard.  The exterior doors had those fiendishly stubborn drop-down windows that you have to open, lean through and fumble with the external handle to exit.  The kind you can open as the train hurtles along.  The kind you can stick your head out.  The kind where you can feel the wind in your hair as an InterCity whistles past just inches away.  Even my hair.  There was something wonderfully wild and unfussy about the whole thing.   I relished every moment knowing that someday soon it’ll be consigned to the history books by Health and Safety and the unstoppable march of unnecessary ‘improvement.’

Hooray

He left a newspaper in the crowded carriage as a marker while he bought a drink.  With ice.  At teatime.  He blustered back in a fashion that only Money can afford.  Loud and brash with the finest plum in his mouth and talking at a volume that ensured the whole carriage was engaged in his conversation, he launched into probing, insensitive, interrogation of his unfortunate seat-mate.  “What do you do?”  “Are you a lawyer?”  “So you’re a solicitor?”  “In the City?”  “For local government?”  “Are you married?”  “Living with someone?”  Just as it was becoming excruciating, another bloody Hooray-Henry piped up from across the aisle.  “Work in the City?”  “Yes, married twice.  First time to an Aussie.  Family into cattle.  God, it was awful.”  It was like two fucking seals barking at each other.  The conversation charged from money to marriage to football (rugby of course).  It wasn’t so much a dialogue as the proclamation of opinions.  The second’s Spanish Guitar ring tone interrupted the proceedings.  Spanish Guitar.  Ringtone.  I suspect he was being delightfully continental.  Or a twat.  Unfortunately, this exposed the poor girl caught between them to another piece of inspection under the Class microscope.  “Where do you live?”  “What does your boyfriend do?”  It all felt jolly fun.  I’m sure they’ll laugh about it when they return to First Class.  In a show of muted solidarity, we proles shared a silent cheer when he got orf.

Walk in the Park

Brilliant.  Utterly brilliant logic.  Take a piece of industrial wasteland, clear it, shoddily, allow it to become the den of drug dealers, vandals and thieves then call it a car park.  Wait until desperate commuters have hardened themselves with Dunkirk-spirit then quadruple the charges overnight, driving all the users onto the side streets.  Paint double yellow lines on all the neighbouring roads and employ twelve new traffic wardens to police them.  Close car park because of lack of use.  Install thousands of meters to pay wardens’ wages.  Piss off just about everyone.  It’s easy when you think about it.

Seasoned Traveller

I tried to like him.  I really did.  After all, I didn’t really know him and we were together for such a short time.

Everyone was fleeing Town today, packing the trains solid.  The man at the gate was reluctant to let me board at all - “It’s all reserved” he said. 

I saw the very last seat.  It was partially hidden by a man and his bag.  Now this gets my goat: arrogant jerks who deliberately sit in the aisle seat and fill the window one with their luggage.  They stare rigidly ahead and avoid the pleading eyes of others with nowhere to sit - as if it’s perfectly reasonable to store a bag there and let people stand.  Well, that was my seat and I was having it. 

“Excuse me,” I said, “Would you move your bag, please.”  He paused just in case I might be talking to harassed parents and their four children squeezed around the table in front, then, huffing, lifted his suitcase out of the way.  He didn’t move himself of course, responding as though I might just be wanting to look at the seat.  And it was a good looking seat, I grant you.  But he sat, steadfast, and now encumbered with his case.  Unmoving.  He sighed heavily as a mashed myself past his satchel and his fat arse into the gap.

As I sat, he immediately seeped over the shared armrest.  I resisted the urge to ask him if he was going to piss over the place too in order to mark his territory.  Moron. 

I tried not to seethe.  I read instead.  I finished Hard Boiled Wonderland long before my stop, tried to distract myself with the passing view but was drawn inescapably back to my neighbour. 

He was late fifties, I’d guess.  Dark hair gone mostly white.  Big moustache.  I’m always wary of men with moustaches - it’s a matter of principle.  Thick set but not fat; heavy hairy arms that didn’t pause for wrists before emerging as bulky hands.  Strangely effeminate pink polo shirt.  I suspect pink lacy knickers too.  He was reading a film script.  But by the time we pulled into a station all I saw was a large whiskery slug, with gelatinous tentacles that oozed slime.  And all I wanted was a large pot of salt.

Standard Class

They get free newspapers in First Class.  I have, allegedly, had altercations with Guards about my movement of said papers from First to Cattle class.  I sometimes nervously retrieve used copies in the morning for my later reading pleasure.  Also, allegedly.  So tonight it was with some glee that I watched a man brazenly strike a blow for us Little People.  He wore a suit.  I think that confused the Customer ‘Service’ automatons.  They stood as guardians protecting the doors to luxury travel with armloads of clean fresh evening papers.  Our hero strode boldly towards the door, as if to enter, and took the Evening Standard obsequiously offered.  And then, as though he considered this carriage not fine enough, he turned and walked up the train.  All the way to us cheering proles as the end.  When the Revolution comes, we won’t even need suits.

For shore

Forty-five minutes in and I’m sitting in a queue to leave the motorway: during the wait, a military transport plane disgorges three lots of seven paratroopers from one thousand feet.  They land in the airfield adjacent to the road.  In combat, they jump from four hundred.  I still think four thousand is too low for my parachute opening and my peace of mind.

One hour: I follow a bloody diagonal smear on the road for a hundred metres before seeing the carcass of a deer slumped near the central reservation.  Amazingly it’s head looks undamaged and its dead doey eyes stare unblinking at the traffic.

One hour and fifty three minutes: the odometer ticks to 130,000 miles, reducing the value of my worthless car still further.  But it keeps on going untroubled.

Two hours fifty minutes: almost diverted by an interesting sign.  Immediately regret not being.

Three hours and fifteen minutes:  arrive to cloudless skies. 

Three hours, thirty: The sound of gently crashing waves on pebble beach, the caw-cawing of gigantic seagulls and the shouts of children playing where the water meets the shore is just about audible from the sauna-like room of our business meeting.

Spotted

I think I’ve seen that one before.  I looked for the name.  “John Tracy.”  I had.  And the one behind.  Do their numbers all start ‘666?’  And then I saw the Them.  Clumps of men at the ends of platforms with cameras, notebooks and a shared passion for something generally regarded as inconceivably dull.  They’d seen me looking.  And there was a glint of recognition in their eye and an imperceptible nod.  They think I one of them.  I've been spotted.  Shoot me now.