Train of Thought

It was one of those long days yesterday. Hull to London.

Every so often I get summoned to attend a mandatory training session in the Capital in order to keep up with legislation, good practice and new developments on the basis that ignorance and naivety is no longer a good excuse for not doing something.

Although many of my colleagues are based north of London it has, with our organisation, been the case that a day seminar in the smoke is a regular on the calendar and so I found myself walking through the early morning drizzle over the mile or so from my house to Hull Station.

The business had been good over the preceding months and so I patted smugly and contentedly the envelope in my jacket pocket that contained the First Class Return tickets.

There is a certain perception and indeed expectation of what comes with paying that bit more for any service but illogically the carriage providing the luxury experience was hitched up directly behind the diesel train and so it was necessary to walk the full length of Platform 12 to get to it. Any shelter afforded by the fantastically engineered vaulted roof of Paragon Station was quickly left behind on that long trek to carriage M.

The less than 20 minute walk from home meant that I was still quite early for the 7am scheduled departure and I hesitated to open the carriage door in case they were still preparing everything for the journey south. The driver or guard or chief steward or someone on the staff or it could have been another passenger told me it was alright to climb aboard and I was soon in the cosy warm cocoon that would form my surroundings for the next three hours.

I was in a window seat at one of the tables that accommodate four persons and with my back to the direction the engine would be going. I seem, with my advancing years,  to have grown out of a long term affliction of chronic travel sickness that made car journeys as a child an unpleasant and frequently sticky and odorous thing so seating arrangements were not a priority.

Stowing my coat in the overhead shelf I started to sort out the contents of my lap top bag that I would need in order to use the captive time to get on with some much needed catch-up work. I had decided to leave the lap top at home based on the wholly illogical fear of a Northerner of becoming the victim of an elaborate scam by a Londoner who, as we all know, are out to get us. After all they have all of our jobs, money and opportunities so why not go for the whole set.

A thick wad of papers emerged from the depths of the larger of the compartments in the bag and I piled them up on the surface of the table. I envisaged in my mind a line to represent what would be my reasonable and proportional territory on the table top, in effect an elongated quadrant. As the train filled up at successive stops I would probably have to concede a few square centimetres to fellow travellers to allow for their own chattels, coffee cups and technology but I would be happy to do that in the name of co-operation and human spirit.

As it was I had the whole table to myself for a good hour before the adjacent seats were taken up by those alighting at those well patronised London commuter towns of Newark and Grantham.

The quality of the ride was abysmal and my scribblings of notes and addendums on the mound of papers was akin to the best hand written script of a Doctor, a half-wit or a drunkard. I am not sure why the carriage bucked and rolled so much. The complimentary coffee with which I was regularly plied had its own eco-system complete with white topped waves which slapped each other as they were thrust up by the motion of the train.

I thought again that being attached directly to the locomotive may have removed any flexibility or dampening influence which would, no doubt, be the case in the cheap and cheerful carriages trailing in a different time zone about a mile behind me. So much for a smooth, effortless and cosseted experience in First Class.

The tannoy did reinforce the class system that paraded itself on the train by reminding the new passengers where everything was in a clear and unambiguous message but with an obviously hidden message to warn the riff raff from wandering into the privileged sections.

I expect that those in carriages A to L were having a great time and could not give a champagne flute for what was going on in the expensive seats. As far as I was concerned I was very much an outsider and imposter but undertaking an essential observation of how the better off conducted themselves and treated others of the same social and economic standing.

No one made an attempt to speak to me and so I returned the same sentiment. There were the usual overheard conversations of how much this years tax payment was, the merits of a Mercedes Benz over a BMW, where the best skiing had been found and the problems associated with running more than one house in more than one country.

I found the eavesdropping quite stressful and tiring mainly out of sympathy for those suffering the privations and inconveniences of wealth and power.

I giggled a bit when the announcement was made that the arrival at Kings Cross would be delayed because of problems with overhead cables in Haringey. A few clipped voices complained about lefties, lesbians and immigrants finding it necessary to steal the copper cables with gay abandon as was, apparently, the inevitable consequence of that disjointed and dysfunctional demographic.

I was quite prepared to have to express my own observations in defence of our multi-cultural and creative society. In one of those rehearsals of musings deep inside the cleverer parts of the brain I certainly sounded succinct and with a well balanced argument that could result in  me receiving a standing ovation in the carriage from like minded humanitarians or even a short slot in front of Jeremy Paxman on the late night TV listings.

Of course, not being a true Northerner (born in Aylesbury in fact) I kept totally quiet and by doing so simply gave affirmation to the misguided doctrines and unfounded suspicions of the chattering and self absorbed elements of our once tolerant and compassionate nation.