Eleven Short Pieces About People And Trains

The issue with trains in this country is that they run badly at the best of times and fail to work at all when something goes wrong. I'm stood on the platform at Wembley Central right this second after being thrown off a train as a result of some selfish soul throwing themselves under a train at Harrow & Wealdstone.

On this train line there are four lines – a set of fast lines going north and a corresponding set of lines heading south. The width of two sets of train lines must be, I don't know, twenty feet. That's a forty foot track width. Assuming this incident happened at the station itself, there's a platform dividing the north / south lines and that must measure about twenty foot also.

A person, even if compressed under a train, could not cover two sets of tracks and a platform. So please forgive me for not comprehending why it is that a train could not pass along one set of lines while the other is blocked. But this is precisely how the powers that be handle something like this – total shutdown. No trains are allowed to move anywhere, Euston is at a total standstill and according to my friend Paul who is currently at Euston, they're telling what must be an absolute throng of commuters that there will be no trains until at least 8.30. I've been here at Wembley since 5.30 and it's now 6.30. Seems like a huge wait for one solitary fatality.

No trains from the North West can get through because they've got to pass through Harrow to get to London. I couldn't even begin to imagine how many passengers are being inconvenienced this evening given that this affects travellers from Glasgow right down to London, but one person has caused a heck of a lot of people a lot of frustration this sticky July evening.

For me, this represents something of a comeuppance. I was in Bournemouth today meeting an IFA with a fund manager from our office. I've been meaning to take this particular fund manager out to lunch for a while to massage his ego and say thanks for a year of support. To what now appears to be my detriment, we chose today for his convenience since he lives in Bournemouth. What I thought was supposed to be a quick sandwich and a chat turned into a three course meal and a full-blown meeting. This meant that I left Bournemouth much later than anticipated, slightly worse for wear and much to the disappointment of my wife, and caught a much later train from Euston back home. If you've ever seen My Name Is Earl, you might well call this karma; bad things happen because you've done bad things.

Predictably, and understandably, I am well and truly in the doghouse over this at home. I have missed my daughter's bedtime, which often leads to her having an unsettled night's sleep. I'm also not going to be around to cook dinner for my wife who really needs to be resting after a day of sickness and looking after a one year old who is running her into the ground.

But hey, it's seven now and we're moving again. It sucks to have been delayed so long, but at least it's earlier than 8.30 and at least I won't be camping out at Wembley.

***

A girl is facing me from the other side of the aisle, applying makeup using her mobile phone as a mirror. Layer after layer goes on, and I'll admit that she was pretty around layer number three, but for all the attention lavished on her face her hair was lank and messy, more like a female mullet than anything fashionable. And she keeps looking at me and is smiling with her eyes, and all I can think of is: please brush your hair. She did eventually and it looked worse than before.

***

It’s a warm day. An older lady opposite me on the tube is taking an age to eat a Mars chocolate bar, each mouthful thoroughly masticated while the chocolate must be melting into nothing in her hand. The front of her right shoe is scuffed right down to the soft brown leather underneath the outer colour, and she's wearing a full coat despite the heat. She is taking up two seats, one with herself the other with a handbag. She's got a shopping trolley hung on the handle of the door that perilously crosses into the next carriage. She has quite a sinister stare, as if she's embittered with the world. The tube pulls up at Barbican and the doors ponderously open. Only then does she start to move, shoving the Mars in her coat pocket as she picks up her bags, then very casually strolls off the train as if it's jolly well going to wait for her before signalling that it's going to move on. She makes it, but only just.

At the next stop, Farringdon, a woman all in white, wearing shorts that were far too short and a blouse that was cut far too low, takes her seat. She's wearing red flip-flops, and carrying a trolley case in one hand and a massive floppy hat in the other. When she sits down the case goes next to her seat and the hat rests in her lap. It's so wide-brimmed that from where I'm sitting all I can see is her skin because of the short shorts and low top and so she appears to be wearing nothing.

***

On the train home, the guy next to me is working on financial spreadsheets on a laptop. He takes a break, pulls the screen closer so that me and the guy next to him can't see (by doing it he's attracted attention and so I take a look out of the corner of my eye) and pulls up a load of hardcore pornography on the screen, not accidentally but deliberately and flicks through it all until he reaches the end of the slideshow, adjusts himself then goes back to his financial modelling. I can't believe someone would do this in the rush hour, but it was at least more interesting than the spreadsheets.

***

I had breakfast with my sister this morning at a hotel near Pimlico Underground station. I couldn't face a fry-up; I've always been a bit funny about cooked breakfasts in places that I haven't been to before, and even more so when I can see into the kitchens like I could when Natalie and I went to the buffet to load up. It's a strange thing to get anxious about, but a constant whenever I go somewhere new; for some reason too the sight of loads of food laid out like this makes me really ill, like I'm going to have to eat it all. I drank far too much coffee, leaving me with a horrible feeling in my mouth. I don't see Natalie often enough and I didn't see her for long enough this morning.

Saying farewell at Pimlico, I took the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus. I'm always amazed at London's second 'rush hour', consisting of the last stragglers going to work plus the intransient population who've just eaten their breakfast and are ready to hit the tourist attractions of the city at the same time. They're all sat there with their identical maps, trying to work out where they need to get off to see the sights, or peering up at the tube maps on the curved ceilings of the carriage for validation that they are actually heading the right way.

***

As if it wasn't bad enough that she basically sat on my arm when she got on the train, and then proceeded to talk her bland friend and celebrity gossip down the phone as loud as she liked, she then started playing with her ponytail like some kid of about five years old, giving it five twizzles with her forefinger and thumb before pushing the end of the stubby little tail into her ear; all the while she's doing it she's sucking her thumb. She then stops, perhaps realises that she's about fifteen years older than the person she's acting like, and then starts again. There are some irritating people in this world. I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at how annoying and immature she is which prompts a female passenger opposite to laugh at me and causes me to roll my eyes.

***

I sat opposite a very pretty woman on the tube this morning. She was listening to her iPod. Toward the end of the journey from Euston Square to Liverpool Street she flicked through the playlist – the 'clicker' volume was up, but because she was attractive I didn't find myself getting annoyed like I would normally – and changed the track. Her brown eyes then started to moisten and her lip began to tremble, so this song obviously meant something to her. She stayed on the train when I alighted at Liverpool Street and I'll never know whether she properly burst into tears, but it touched me to see someone so emotional in a city so often, and so necessarily, devoid of feeling.

***

One is a guy eking out an existence asking for people to give him their used travel cards, he claims, to enable him to get to work. I have no issue with this – it facilitates a redistribution of a 24-hour permit where more than one person could use a travel card without lining the pockets of TFL. It’s a bit like the generous individuals who hand you their all-day parking permit when leaving the car park before it’s due to run out. TFL and NCP only advise you not to pass these permits only in a draconian attempt to make more money, someone once said to me and I have to say that I agree. Someone also said it funds drug abuse as they then sell the tickets they’ve just got for free to someone else. Drugs must be cheap these days.

The other is a Malcolm McLaren look-alike who travels first class, dresses in jackets from Aquascutum in large, exploded check in the manner of a Teddy Boy / Dandy mutation, who pronounces the 'th' correctly in the name of his friend, Anthony, and who insists on slamming the slide door to the first class carriage whenever the guard leaves it slightly ajar.

***

Am I the only one who gets annoyed with pedestrians who walk at a slower pace than me? I've just followed a woman down the stairs at Euston Square who seemed to have no idea whatsoever that there was a queue of people like me behind her who don't want to meander their way to the Tube during the rush-hour. I attribute this to one thing – ridiculous heels that mean their wearers can only move at the slowest possible speeds.

***

There's a potentially pretty petite girl – blonde, freckled and lightly tanned – sat opposite me on the train home. She's wearing her hair half up, half down and is wearing a long royal blue knitted top with button down shoulder straps and flecks of glitter over a black T-shirt with leggings tucked into dark brown fur-lined boots, one leg folded neatly over the other. At her feet sits a huge bronze-coloured handbag. She seems, to me in my naivety, exquisitely fashionable. But, really, what do I know? Is she wearing this Autumn's colours and textures, last year's or even next year's? Does this flatter her figure or is this a huge faux pas on her part? These are things I ponder to myself, pointlessly I have to admit.

She's reading a copy of today's The London Paper and folding each page back crisply and meticulously. None of this is particularly new or original; you see trendy young things absorbed in that rag day in, day out on this journey, although her obsessively neat folding is somewhat and uncharacteristically neurotic perhaps. Tidy paper, tidy mind I guess. What surprises me is that we're currently twenty minutes into this train journey and yet she's only made it to page five and even allowing for reading every single word, the cereal bar she ate after completing page three and the brief call she made to someone from her BlackBerry Pearl, that's an incredible amount of time to spend reading the largely empty pages of this free paper when I read it nearly in its entirety earlier between Liverpool Street and Farringdon (three stops or six minutes). What did I miss, I wonder, that has captivated this girl's attention and is causing her to furrow her brow at every article?

***

I couldn't get out of bed early enough this morning to catch my usual 06.43 train and so left the house later than normal, chided by a crow on the roof of the house opposite that seemed determined to wake the rest of the street at this ungodly hour. At the station I bumped into my friends Paul and Matthew but as they both travel on first class tickets whereas I, a mere pauper, can barely afford standard, I elected to take a different train which was by then pulling onto the opposite platform prompting me to leg it back up the stairs, over the bridge and down onto platform two with seconds to spare.

On the packed, but otherwise silent train, seats were few and far between. At Bletchley, two young, arrogant well-groomed City boys jumped on. One sat behind me, the other next to me across the aisle. In a complete absence of spatial awareness, the two struck up a conversation about girls, sport and so on, which although not especially loud, was audible over my iPod even at a moderate volume. Because of the stillness elsewhere in the carriage the conversation seemed frustratingly louder than it actually was, and any second I expected someone to berate these two for not realising that their conversation was distracting for those around me – readers, sleepers, BlackBerry addicts – but no-one does; one of the guys gets off at Watford Junction and peace once again descends on the carriage as we head on toward London.

Second Babies

In anywhere between three and seven weeks' time, my wife will give birth to our second child, who, if the sonographer at Milton Keynes Hospital's view is to be believed, will be another little girl to complement our daughter Seren. This will round off our family in the way we always wanted, in other words to have two children reasonably early on (at least by today's standards - my mother was 25 when she had me), quite close together (there will be a 21-month gap between the two kids). Will there be a third? ‘Never say never’ they say; I say 'never'. But we reserve the right to deny that we ever said this should there be an accidental ('surprise') third child.

I haven't been a good father to my unborn daughter (we shall assume she was right). At least, I don't feel like I have been so far. With Seren I'd read her stories through my wife's tummy, I'd talk to her to acquaint her with her daddy's voice, and generally felt like I'd done a reasonable job of bonding with her unborn form. The books say this is a good thing to do, but I've done very little of that this time. I'd reason that our new baby has heard me talking to Seren and reading her stories, so I'd hope that my voice should by now be pretty familiar. But that hasn't stopped me feeling regretful of not providing her with a similar level of pre-birth bonding.

Depressingly, our second little girl has probably heard far too much from the hot-headed, argumentative sonofabitch that I seem to have spent much of her gestation being. This I regret immensely. My wife and I have spent far too long in the past eight months rowing, and we've had some of the most spectacular blow-outs we’ve had since the early, volatile days of our relationship's youth. For anyone who knows me that doesn't belong to my family, this might be a surprise as I'm considered a calm and measured individual. But that ability to dig a trench and fire volley after volley exists in me, and Michelle also. If I was especially mean, and if I wanted to have another blazing row, I'd blame the unstable hormone cocktail which someone hands to all newly-pregnant women in the early weeks after discovering they're having a child.

The real issue at the heart of these arguments has been my inability to effectively manage any sort of meaningful work / life balance. This has meant I've missed the majority of appointments Michelle's had at the doctors and midwife, whereas when she was carrying Seren I made as much effort as possible to get along to those important appointments to show my support to my wife; in my life I've tried to avoid settling for what I consider outdated male / female responsibilities, and so I considered it my duty as a husband and parent to show that commitment. Plus you get to hear your baby's heartbeat, which even through a Doppler that makes that noise more like an Aphex Twin track, is entirely wonderful. But I've barely been to any of these appointments because of work commitments, and naturally I regret that also.

Quite rightly, my wife has asserted that I haven't been as committed this time around, and that I have assumed, on account of her coping admirably whilst pregnant with Seren, that she doesn't actually require my support. Arguably, second time around, and with a toddler in tow, she probably needs more support, and for the record I'd like to blame it on circumstance rather than it being seen as some form of deliberate reticence on my part.

One of our nuclear disagreements last autumn was sparked by me saying that I hadn't got my head around the idea of having a second baby; I'd go further than that and say that I've had my head in the sand about it. It's come to a head in recent days as I've ploughed into decorating and furnishing baby's room as to just what's about to happen. There’s nothing quite like a baby due in a few weeks to give you a firm kick up the backside to get things ready for her arrival. In spite of insisting that we wouldn’t, we decided that we’d get Christmas and New Year out of the way before really getting stuck into preparations, giving us just eight weeks to turn a room from an office and treasure trove of horded clutter into a baby’s bedroom, which, bearing in mind that I don’t operate at speed when it comes to decorating (or anything, come to think of it) presented something of a brief timescale. We did the same before Seren was born, except there we had five months post New Year before her arrival.

Michelle asked me for assurances in the past few days that I wasn't going to have a massive freak-out like I did last time, referencing the tearful outburst I had in the car whilst chasing the ambulance to the hospital. Something about the way she looked at me and the tone in her voice adequately conveyed to me that she was actually telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I was not going to be doing that. Sadly, unbeknown to her I have the stirrings of a panic right now, exacerbated by the folder she produced a few days ago containing the notes from our National Childbirth Trust attendance two years back. I can't remember anything about labour positions, breathing methods or any of the helpful things I can do as the supportive birth partner. This scares me. I don’t like being unprepared.

'Having a second baby's easy,' said a wizened work colleague, 'and it'll be over before you know it.' Far from reassuring, this didn't help the rising nervousness at all. On a clear run I can get from work to home in an hour and a half, and that's at best! What if it all happens very quickly while I'm at work and I don't get back home in time for the birth, an event I promised I wouldn't miss. On top of already feeling like I haven't done enough for my wife or unborn daughter during this pregnancy, I think if I missed the birth the guilt would just about finish me off. Either that or my wife would.

I don't associate it with my slow acceptance of having a second baby, but I haven't told as many people at work about Michelle being pregnant again. Part of me, I suppose, has a natural tendency toward not making a fuss or drawing attention to myself, and perhaps I'd have been the same with Seren if people around me hadn't chosen to make a big song and dance about it. Part of me just assumes that people wouldn't be anywhere near as interested this time, and so there are still people sitting close to me who still don't know. It doesn't mean I'm not proud of becoming a dad for the second time, because I really am; I just don't expect them to have the same level of enthusiasm as I do, or indeed they had the last time.

An inevitable consequence of this being the second baby, and having the benefit of a modicum more experience, means that you tend to make decisions far quicker. Not this time have we compared the prices and quality of muslin cloths and other minute details; instead you realise they’re all pretty much the same and that they’re only going to get covered in sick or other similarly delightful substances, and grab the first one that comes along. In the same vein, we haven’t spent as long mulling over names for this child, and have decided pretty quickly. Maybe it’s just that we don’t have the time, with Seren to look after these days, to deliberate as much as we could last time.

Time has not been kind this pregnancy. I wouldn't say that time was especially forgiving last time, but I seem to recollect feeling that the experience seemed to go on forever, rendering us desperate at the very end for the baby to arrive. That isn't the case this time. It doesn't seem like five minutes ago that we took the test and found out what we'd suspected for a couple of weeks. Now, with a room half finished, all sorts of things left to purchase or claim back from Seren's cousin, and a whole lot of mental preparation besides, we feel like we could do with another couple of months to prepare. Actually, perhaps that's just me, as Michelle's rapidly getting to the point where she just wants it over, to get her figure back and to start seeing the fruits, literally, of her labours.

An Almost Entirely Pointless Piece On The Weather

There was something about the girl at the station's legs that caught my eye. It wasn't that they were a particularly nice pair of legs, in fact I'd go so far as to say that they were positively among the worst legs I've ever seen. The reason I noticed them is simply because it was precisely that: a pair of legs, and at this cold time of year you don't tend to see the female of the species baring their pins to the world. But that's precisely what this young woman was doing, in a tiny skirt that certainly looked professional (albeit most definitely not in the business sense of that word), the effect worsened considerably by not wearing any tights. Being very pale, it was the combination of the two that made her stand out as she walked through the ticket hall toward the bitterly cold Milton Keynes weather outside. Seeing her dressed the way she was made me shiver, in spite of seemingly being prepared for a blizzard.

I can't begin to imagine what possesses someone to dress in such an inappropriate manner – in the sense of it not being the appropriate weather for such an outfit (but also in the sense of not being able to carry it off). Everyone knows it's cold in January, so I can't fathom why someone like this woman, when planning what to wear that day, would pick out something suited to a mere handful of days, and that's if we're blessed enough here in Britain to actually get a summer, but even if the forecast in January was for mild weather, surely something inside would tell you that a skirt that short isn't sensible. To then think that you'll wear it sans hosiery is surely beyond stupid.

There's a guy who parks his car next to mine during the week whose wardrobe barely changes all year. He wears a short-sleeved shirt every single day, and right up until late November was wearing one without a coat; as the temperature dropped, his sole concession has been to stick on a very thin jacket, of the variety worn by a tennis player from about 1985 after a match. He takes the same walk as me down to the station, and normally has a head-start on me, leaving me trailing woefully behind and wondering how it's possible for him to be so impervious to the cold.

Don't even get me started on the guys who bring their bikes onto the train and wear those tiny lycra cycling shorts and t-shirts. While I admire their commitment to fitness, such clobber practically induces hypothermia in me just thinking about it.

We have a South African family living opposite us. We call the patriarch No Shoes because in the summer he very rarely wears anything on his feet. He also wears shorts for the most part of the year and only in the last few weeks has he started wearing long trousers. He's one of those alpha male types, so it's probably the case that he's too proud to admit to being cold. I don't understand it though; when I was at university, we had a high Greek student population, and it was always the case that during even the balmiest British summer term, they’d be wearing thick North Face puffer jackets. When I asked one of the more approachable chaps in one of my classes as to why this was the case, he explained that compared to their own weather, this was actually cold. Accordingly, during winter the puffer jacket was augmented by enormous Thinsulated gloves and scarves that were more like blankets. The effect was to swell the ordinarily trim guys into clones of the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.

So, given that No Shoes has moved from similarly sunny climes to Britain, surely he is similarly acutely sensitive to drops in temperature. But still he persists in wearing the barest minimum when stepping outside his front door, whatever the weather. I can only assume that during the winter his heating is fired up to maximum and that this distorts his ability to discern the correct temperature. All I know is that when I see him wearing a t-shirt outside during the winter it makes me feel really cold.

Writing about No Shoes reminded me of a boy I went to primary school with, Anthony Sutton. I recall one day being in the toilets before the school day started when an awful kafuffle started coming from one of the stalls, from a wailing boy and what sounded like an adult female. Said boy was the aforementioned Anthony and the adult was his mother. I think it was a day during late autumn, and a note had come around to parents advising that the summer uniform had come to an end and that girls needed to switch from their summer dresses to a blouse and skirt, whereas boys needed to stop wearing those horrid little grey shorts they made us wear in favour of long trousers.

I couldn’t wait for that memo to come round and I was in my long trousers faster than you could say Jack Frost, but Anthony was far less enthusiastic. In fact, he seemed pretty opposed to the idea, as the fracas in the toilet stall was his mother trying to get him to put on his long trousers rather than the shorts she’d put him in evidently just to coerce him as far as the school gate. According to my own mother, who spoke to Anthony’s at the school gate later that day, the only way she managed to get him to wear the long trousers was by taking a pair and cutting them down into shorts so that he’d see there was nothing to be afraid of. Fancy being scared of a pair of long trousers! I’m not really one to comment, I was afraid of wellington boots and would beg my mum to let me stay at home when the snow started falling as I didn’t want to have to put them on to go to school. I was also scared of whoopee cushions. I had a few issues as a child.

A few years ago the company I work for recruited two new copywriters. One, Nick I think his name was, was a really nice chap who I had a lot of time for. As these were not client-facing roles, there was no requirement for anyone in our team to wear especially formal work attire, so in the department none of us – barring one guy who felt it was his esteemed duty to ensure he was sartorially well-represented in expensive Richard James suits and equally pricey ties – wore a necktie, for example. If I had to go along with a client director to a face to face meeting with his client, I’d dig out a tie from my abysmal collection, but only ever wear it for the duration of that meeting, and wouldn’t be able to get it off fast enough afterwards (I’m still like this today actually, despite being in a client-facing role now).

All through Nick’s tenure with us, which I think started early summer that year, he never wore a tie, for the reasons mentioned above. One day during that winter he came in wearing full suit and tie, making all of us speculate that he was probably off for an interview as it was so out of character. And yet, for the rest of that week he wore the same get-up so I asked him one day why the sea change in dress, to which he responded that the tie was merely a way of stopping his neck getting cold. Why a scarf wouldn’t have sufficed I don’t know. He was a bit quirky like that. I think he went off to write books about marginal cricket stars from bygone years or something.

I had a friend from school, Luke, who went to Newcastle University. By email one day he commented on how little the girls in Newcastle wore on an average winter evening out. I saw a picture on the front cover of one of the tabloids just after New Year which made me think about this; the photo was supposed to be highlighting how bad British binge-drinking had become, the picture being of five or six scantily-clad young women falling about all over the pavements swigging from bottles of alcopops during a New Year night out. The first thing I thought when I saw the picture was not ‘terrible state of affairs all this binge drinking ain’t it?’ but ‘why on earth aren’t they cold?’, the answer to which probably lies in the advanced state of inebriation they were clearly in.

Suffice to say, it’s cold, I’m cold and I can’t wait for the spring to arrive. And whilst I of course don’t support the rape and pillage of our planet which is giving rise to hotter summers and melting ice-caps, at least these days the temperatures don’t seem to drop as far as they did in the seemingly glacial years of my boyhood where you used to get thick layers of snow every year, people used to regularly have snowball fights and go sledging, and you used to see foot-long icicles hanging from overflowing gutters.