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The journey back from Falmouth seemed a lot longer than the one there, partly because I had one more change of train to make, but also I was feeling ill and tired. But it stirred up nostalgic memories of being a teenager when I travelled by train a lot more. Many of the West Country train stations have barely changed since I was a 19 year old. Falmouth Town station, charmingly is just a single concrete platform with one railway line passing by it. There is a little shelter at one end and the only concession to modernity is a small electronic help station displaying the times of the trains and even though I haven’t been here before it stirred up memories of this kind of rural train station and I was 19 again, travelling around Europe with my red Karrimore rucksack and my tent. Travelling by train seemed romantic and exciting then (though not as exciting as hitchhiking which I did a fair amount of too) and I suppose it was. In those days I had nowhere particularly to go. My only incentive was to explore and experience stuff (which I did tentatively and nervously and badly). The train was not, as it was today, just a tedious necessity to get me from where I was to where I wanted to go, it represented freedom and adulthood and the unknown. The world was full of potential.
And yet, typically and obviously, that young man had no idea how lucky he was or how special or fleeting that time would be, how he should savour it and make the most of every second because he’d never get the chance to experience that feeling again. Or at least only as a pleasant, dull, ache of nostalgia in his stomach, decades later. And if he had understood what he had had then I wouldn’t feel this nostalgic fondness for the foolish and lucky child that I once was. Even though I was restricted by lack of money and train timetables (or whether drivers would stop to pick me up) I had a complete kind of freedom that I’d never have again. Like Paul Simon sitting on a railway station, my unknowable future spreading out before me, torn between wishing I was at home and wanting to make the world my own. The song played in my mind as I waited for the 10.23 train to Truro and I smiled at who I was and who I am and how we can sometimes reach back through time and touch our past with our fingertips, but our time travelling fingers can do nothing to change the things we would do. And even as we do this we’re unaware of the fingertips of our future self reaching back to remember us as we are now. The Richard Herring of 2044 might travel through one of these West Country train stations, with it’s decorative green, metal balustrades and recall the man he was thirty years before, unaware of… well, I don’t know what, because I am unaware of it, but maybe unaware of the fact that he had his last few days of calm and peace before his life was turned upside down by becoming a dad.
We never notice us when our future self is fingering us through time.
West Country people are the best though. The train was fairly empty, but the reserved seats were all clumped together and my table was shared by a kind-faced businesswoman working on her laptop and a young woman who might have been a student. On the table opposite ours were two Railway employees who I think might have been managers of some kind, who were chatting and joking together. One of them had a little beard on his chin, like a wizard might have had. These are my kind of people. One of them made the businesswoman laugh by complaining about his asthma and his doctor telling him that cigarettes were making it worse, though he found they made it better. Everyone was relaxed enough to joke around and join in with the conversation. The smoker manager noted how we were all cramped up on one table when there were loads of free seats and told the businesswoman that she could have his table when they got off at Exeter, even offering to put a reservation ticket on his seat for her. She was charmed and grateful and he said it was all part of the service. This was all in the spirit of friendliness, rather than flirtation. And how weird is it that employees of anything behaving like this is notable rather than normal.
The smoking asthmatic went to the dining car and returned with enough drinks and biscuits for us all, even though none of us had requested them. Even if he got those for free that was still a very nice thing to do. The kind of thing that doesn’t ever happen once you get closer to London, but which happens in places where people are less cynical. The asthmatic man then made a joke about his doctor telling him he shouldn’t eat sugar because of his diabetes, but it made him feel better. It was kind of the same joke as before but I was impressed with his disregard for modern medicine.
Thanks to those guys for being so nice and friendly to their customers. Great Western Railways should be proud and I am sure that’s not a sentence that you can say very often
The Radio Academy interview I did with Geoff Lloyd last month about podcasting is now available to listen to as a podcast. Here’s the podcast podcast.
Check out this interview I did for Action Aid and donate to them if you so wish.
