When I was a boy I thought life was like this railway station in Switzerland: a bell rings, giving everyone a polite warning; the crossing guard comes down, the train draws up safely to the platform. We board and leave. All is orderly and controlled, laid out without drama or disaster, always working, the lights blinking in time.
The scene out of the window is of an immaculate hillside of deliberately placed chalets, the train track snacking like a brush-stroked filament through the greenery. A background of immovable majesty and in the foreground a toy town immerges with all the ingredients in place, in the right place without complaint or complication. As a boy I loved Babbacombe Model Village in Torbay, Devon. I would stride amongst the miniature world woven together by steaming trains. Cities made manageable and intimidating landmarks reduced to a size that compliments us onlooking gods. I hoped the whole world would look like this - me staring down while holding the hand of parents above me. Always trains are the best part and still a fascination. Why trains, I wonder, looking at a model of the Gotthard railway in the Lucern Transport museum – the trains sneaking up, over, through and around the massif. Is that raw machinery, the substance of heaving iron and gas and sweat? Is it the visible complexity of all the moving parts? Is it the innate democratic intent of dedicated people working together to move masses of people to places of wonder in some kind of comfort? Is it an inherited cultural joy of something glorious but lost when the cars crept into our familiarity? The train remains my favourite form of transport. Looking out of the window at the fleeting imagery is still the best therapy, the most stimulating of day dreams. Out there is the real world fixed in place for a few flashing seconds. The imagination bubbles up and the train can take me anywhere, back to boyhood and the model villages or into dreams of worlds of my own making, ever the tiny human playing at being a demi-god, hoping to fix everything into its rightful, undying, satisfying place.
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An occasional Saturday treat was getting fish ‘n chips with my brother and father. This was a rare moment when just us three boys would go on an adventure to hunt and gather the evening’s meal. Like all male bonding expeditions, it possessed a series of special rituals and trials.
First of all there was the journey itself: a half hour walk from Epsom Common, past Stamford Green pond, up West Hill and then through the back roads of semi-detached middle class homes on West Hill Avenue. A worryingly dark alley spat us out to the Pound Lane estate area - home to my Dad’s old primary school and any number of loitering working class teenage gangs who sometimes would mock us. ‘Ignore them,’ said Dad dismissively. He had the strongest hands of anyone I knew but never raised them against anyone. The fish n’ chip shop itself was on a small strip of shops on Pound Lane, opposite the primary school. There was the predictable range of options: an Indian take-away, a hairdressers, a bike repair shop and a newsagent outside which the teenagers lingered, roughly requesting passing adults buy them cigarettes and alcohol. Secondly the shop itself: a sweaty hive of frying activity run by a middle-aged Chinese couple, hyperactive in their cooking and serving, and speaking English with a very pronounced accent. The wife took the orders and then fired instructions to the husband in a language that sounded exotic but incomprehensible. Thirdly, the walk home: the piping hot meal to be pecked at through a hole picked in the oily layers of newspaper wrapping. The glorious grease of the chips, the flakes of white fish meat, the occasional deliciously devilish battered sausage. We walked slowly, eating, sharing grunts of approval, unaware this was one of the best times together. Fourthly, all of the above happening in autumn and winter: the darkness with it’s fears and cosiness, the blinking street lamps, the orange luxury of large living rooms in the houses we passed, the splatter of rain on fallen leaves. We finished the meals off at home with Mum’s cooling order and started drooling about the next visit. |
AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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