Wonderment

When they boarded the train at Bletchley, I was preparing myself to be annoyed - four adults, four kids, London-bound no doubt as part of their Easter holiday. The adult in front of me reeked of smoke, the kind of smoke that's been absorbed over many days and months into clothing and which barely even smells like cigarettes any longer. The kids were noisy and the adults were too engaged in their conversation to make any effort at calming the kids down or reminding them that there were other passengers around them. Other passengers such as me, sat behind one of the kids trying to keep my head down and work. My Blackberry was the source of considerable intrigue to this child, who kept turning around and poking his head between the seat backs to see what I was doing, evidently believing that I was using some sort of handheld gaming device (if only). And so, all in all, I was expecting this to be one of those really lengthy, uncomfortable and unproductive journeys to work.

As the journey progressed, my frustration mellowed. After all, it's the school holidays and actually it was me - not this family - that was out of place on this post-rush hour train, which during any school break is packed with families taking advantage of cheap day return tickets into London (a bargain at £12.90 for an adult compared to £30.90 at peak times), and this was the first train of the day where you can use such tickets. When I alighted at London I was certainly in the minority given the paucity of fellow besuited commuters. Everywhere I looked were parents holding the hands of small children or trying to get a baby-filled pushchair from train to platform or trying to restrain their child in their yearning to get through the barriers and on with their day out. And actually, this entire scene at the platform was extremely heart-warming to see. Our great capital is perfect for days out, and any alternative to kids sitting at home watching DVDs or playing PlayStation / Wii / Xbox is always going to make me more optimistic about children and the modern world in which my own daughter is growing up in.

I remember badgering my parents for many years to take my sister and I to London for a day out. They finally yielded one damp Easter Sunday - I wish frequently that I could recall the year - and drove my sister and I to the capital, parked up on Edgware Road and the four of us trekked our way across London (no tubes for us as mum was, post the Kings Cross fire, wary of them), the glee and excitement of a day spent on our feet seeing the places we'd only ever previously seen on TV overriding the tiredness which my sister and I must have felt. Whenever the drudgery of working in London begins to take over, I remind myself of that Easter Sunday and of how exciting it was to be there and how vast and impressive the city turned out to be in reality.

But back to the double family sat in front of me on the train. What finally made my initially frosty attitude thaw was the sheer wonderment of the boy in front of me. It was an enthusiasm that was contagious, filled with the kind of questions and enquiries of his dad that only the innocent child can ask. He reflected the positive lack of self-awareness that kids have and which over time can be cruelly stamped out of them by education and society. He didn't worry that his enquiries may have seemed pointless or ridiculous to an adult, nor did he seem to be suspect that his father was not in fact an expert in all of the areas he wanted to know about.

The boy seemed genuinely thrilled to be on a train, and wanted to know everything from the number of tracks, to the types of train they might see and even a subject so apparently banal (to an adult) as the frequency of fast trains into Euston. He'd shout the name of every station we stopped at and act confused when we'd pass through certain ones at speed without stopping. Likewise he could barely conceal his excitement at the prospect of being on board an Underground train. The mystique of your first train or Tube journey as a child are lost on people like me who do this most days of the week, but seeing this boy's genuine joy made me recall that yes, once upon a time, this was exciting to me, long before it induced a crushing ennui in me.

If my memory serves me, my first rail journey would have been from Birmingham New Street to Glasgow when I was about four, travelling to see my now sorely-depleted Scottish relatives with my mother. I can remember distinctly how exciting it was on board that train, even though it seemed to take an age, marvelling out the window at the interesting things there were to see as we wended our way northward. My mother pointed out a heron in a lake somewhere in the countryside, but at the time I didn't even know what that was and couldn't fathom what I was supposed to be looking at, and wouldn't see another until I saw one in the park at St Albans nearly twenty years later. I also remember dropping dolly mixtures all over the floor and doing lots of colouring in. But most of all I remember, after seeing this boy's alacrity, just how thrilling that train journey was, from waving goodbye to my dad at New Street to being collected by my now departed Uncle Harvey at the other end.

My first Underground journey wasn't until much, much later. My fellow second year university student and housemate Craig and I took the train from Colchester to London one wintry Saturday afternoon, and then took the tube from Liverpool Street to the West End where Craig wanted to buy some history books from Foyle’s, whereas all I wanted was CDs from the HMV on Oxford Street. By this time I was twenty and well beyond being able to gush all the way to London about how overjoyed I was at finally getting to ride a Tube, but I felt it inside. Craig had lived in London all his life, and for him it was second nature like it is to me today, but for me, just being in London, going Underground and witnessing Oxford Street in the run-up to Christmas was incredibly and pleasingly overwhelming to the senses.

Prior to this my mum had always said that the pavements along Oxford Street at Christmas were so clogged with pedestrians that you were swept along as if by a tide, and this had always made me somewhat nervous - but intrigued - about wanting to shop in London before Christmas. True, I'd never seen policemen standing at crossings with megaphones barking out when people should wait or cross, but beyond that I could have been mugged at gunpoint and it wouldn't have dampened my enthusiasm one jot.

And this innocent boy, himself no older than four or five, reminded me of all those things and made the effort of commuting all the more worthwhile. It also reminded me of how fantastic it's going to be when Seren, my little angel, is able to approach life with that same wide-eyed awe, that quest to know the why's and wherefores of absolutely everything, and no matter how tiring it might be to be on the receiving end of a barrage of Paxman-esque enquiries, I can't wait.