Notes from a train

A couple sit opposite me. I wonder if they know I have my shoes off. The man has a thick goatee with surrounding stubble and wears a furrowed spectacle, stroking his lip and ear in one subtle gesture. He is quite a slight fellow, with thin shoulders and a cheap white polo shirt on.

He reads Model Rail magazine and looks disinterested.

He’s following his hobby beyond enthusiasm. He’s reading up on model trains with defeated boredom. He’s resigned to the fact that he’s noticing small price variations from volume to volume. Even being on a real train doesn’t seem to be exciting him.

He leaves the train at Northallerton with the woman I haven’t had time to describe. Needless to say, she wore glasses and an anorak.

And now I sit alone, shoeless feet stretching on a cheeky chair opposite.

I want to eat snacks. I’ve already previously ordered a magnolia-coloured cup of tea. It reassuringly warned me that contents may be hot.

I’m already rehearsing in my head how I would plead with a member of the public should they want to use the seat I’m resting my feet on. The train conductor keeps asking for tickets. Shouting out following every small stop this tired old train makes. Just don’t move your arms or look up and he’ll just roll on by, for free…

He asks the carriage if anyone can change a tenner for an idiot who obviously looked a bit shifty when conducto-dude made an appearance - forced the guy straight up to tell him where he was going. That’s intrusive that is. I don’t want to tell you where I’m going.

A child is making noise now.

This isn’t pleasant. The kid won’t shut up. He’s saying “helllooo”, stretching the second part of the salutation so that it sounds more like a menacing demand, but from a kid.

Oh great, now I’m sitting opposite a small man reading Sound on Sound magazine.

* * *

I met someone in town yesterday who used to go to my school. I can’t remember his name.

I bumped into him on my way to the station. Immediately he seemed older than his given years. His greeting was by way of, “I have to go and get very drunk now.”

How does one follow this? “I have to go smack up now?” No, I think I just let the comment sail and decided to engage him briefly in conversation. I was in no rush.

He seemed restless. I looked at his face. His beard was rough, his hair scraggly and matted. I remember that at school he once grew his hair very long. What made his hair worse than the hanging gizzard of faded straw that slopes off my head was that he refused to wash it. Ever. He’d heard that beyond a certain point your hair begins to cleanse itself, so why bother?

I suppose with the benefit of hindsight it’s likely that he was in the midst of a rather dark teenage depression. But at the time, it was quite funny.

Looking at his frantic features in the street, I'm starting to file this man under 'alcoholic'. Skin rough and scarred, eyes wide and empty. “I have to go get very drunk now.” He said it again. I asked him what he was up to. “Still on the dole,” he said. Not, "I’m on the dole". I could very easily have told him the same thing had I had some patience with the benefit forms – but the way he said it intoned that he had been on the dole since the last time I had seen him, and thus forever. I asked him where he lived. “Still at home.”

And we left it at that. He went to get himself very drunk very quickly and I went home to find that my bed was soaked in rain water, leaking in through the fucking roof.


Thanks God, Thod.