Waiting for the train home – inconsequential thoughts

I was waiting at St Pancras Station one morning this week for the train home. I was early. I’m almost always early.

St Pancras station, though it is large, feels more like an open air station than most London stations. Now I know there has to be some sort of hole to let the trains come in and out but if you are travelling from Platforms 1, 2, 3 or 4 upstairs then you are facing the open air to the north in a way that you aren’t downstairs at the Eurostar entrance. A Eurostar train was on the other side of a fence from where I sat on the metal benches but its passengers were rather cosy downstirs whereas I felt a bit nippy. Well, if you are always early you spend a lot of time hanging around, and sitting on a metal bench on a cold day brings it home to every part of your body that it is a cold day.

I looked up and saw two Feral Pigeons mating on a roof girder. I suppose that is one way to both pass the time, and perhaps keep warm, but not one open to most rail passengers.

I felt quite good about myself that I had not bought a cup of coffee. A coffee could have been purchased downstairs (or, most easily, down escalator) where it was warm, and the coffee would have been warm too, and no doubt the thing that I might have bought to eat with the coffee would have been nice but I didn’t need any of those things so I wasn’t having them.

A man ran up to the barriers and couldn’t get through because his train was leaving imminently. This saved him from running down the platform alongside a departing train but he looked more distraught than I have ever seen someone who has missed a train. His head fell. He spoke to the staff at the ticket barrier. He dropped his bag. I wondered whether he would drop to his knees but although everything about him drooped he remained upright. Upright but emotionally and physically bowed.

I wonder what were the consequences of missing that train. Was he heading home, to visit a friend, to an interview or what? How much was his life inconvenienced or wrecked by those 60 seconds of lateness? How had he missed the train? What was his journey here and had it been badly planned or were there many small events, or one big one, that had delayed him?

I’ve seen people miss trains and look miffed, and I’ve seen them look angry, but never have I seen someone look so utterly cut down by missing a train.

A very loud announcement came over the tannoy. A man sitting close to me on the cold metal benches turned slightly towards me and said quizzically ‘Really?’. I replied ‘Considering how loud that announcement was, it wasn’t very clear was it?’ and he agreed. I was a bit surprised that he had made a quizzical remark because I thought I detected an American accent and quizzicality is not always to the fore in Americans but I discovered that he had spent quite some time in the UK over the years so maybe he caught quizzicality from us. Maybe.

We chatted and so I know he was from New York but lives in Florida now. We sounded each other out with little gambits and questions of conversation for a while and by so doing discovered we had plenty in common and then we chatted happily. His remark that I have been treasuring ever since, and which has made me smile often, was ‘I’m looking forward to coming back here some time after your election because I gather, from the political parties, that it will be a perfect land, with people wanting for nothing then’. We could have become friends I think, if only because he was waiting for an even later train so we definitely had ‘being early for trains’ as a joint interest, but we chatted for 15 minutes and then shook hands as I went to board my train since the departures board said that it was boarding.

At London stations, I think Paddington is pretty bad at this, they keep you waiting until what seems to me (but then I am early for everything) to be the last minute before letting you get on the train which is in full view with its destination lit up on its engine. But for my train they played another trick, as soon as they said the train was boarding they closed all the ticket barriers through which one could board so that the passengers from an incoming train could dance and skip wherever they wanted on their way out through the exit barriers. But then we were allowed to board, so I boarded.

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Ralph Underhill has stuff to do – back soon.

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