It was another long train journey home from Glasgow. Presumably because it was Sunday and there were engineering works I had to make two changes. First of all I had to get a train to Carlisle (my old nemesis - how I feared for my life in the ten minute wait for my connection) and from there a train to Newcastle, before a half hour wait for the train to London. It was a seven hour journey, which left me wishing I had flown or that I had invented a
Tomorrow People type jaunting belt or wristband (depending on which era you watched the show in if at all - do you remember the 70s? Funny weren't they?).
It wasn't as frazzling as my recent train down from Edinburgh, partly because I knew what I was in for and partly because my fellow passengers weren't quite as annoying. Having said that on the first packed train I was sitting next to a mother with a toddler on her lap who kept kicking me. But for some reason I was in a brighter mood and the mother was ridiculously apologetic so it didn't seem to matter.
In Durham a middle-aged couple sat opposite me and were waving through the window at what facial similarity told me was the woman's daughter and (in all probability) the daughter's husband and children. One of the kids was about six and waved and pulled faces at his grandparents and as the train pulled out the grandma had tears streaming down her face. Whether this was because she thought her grandson's funny faces had been rubbish or because she had had a terrible time visiting them and was relieved to be leaving or because she loved them all very much and was going to miss them I am not in a position to guess. I caught her eye and gave her a reassuring smile as if to say, "Yeah, I'd be ashamed if my grandson was that bad at pulling faces too."
It is amazing how many ways that love will conspire to make us cry.
