I could have been anywhere, but instead I was somewhere. Specifically: I was in Stevenage.
More specifically yet, I was at the train station. Standing on platform four, waiting for a train. Such was the weather (it is June after all) that I had to take shelter next to the platform café.
That was where I was stood, bored, fidgeting, waiting, shivering a little when a young man bounded down the steps to the platform. He had what looked like a nervous twitch in his neck, but he looked happy. Very happy. He looked at me and smiled.
“Where are you headed?” He asked.
“Cambridge,” I replied.
“Oh niiiiiice!” He said.
He was the sort of person, I realised, who has learned to take joy in things, whether in and of themselves they are necessarily joyful, or not.
“How about you?” I asked, wondering where he might be going, if not Cambridge, from the platform that takes people to Cambridge.
But, of course, he wasn’t going anywhere. Why would you, when so much of the world comes directly to you?
“I’m a trainspotter,” he said. “There’s a NMT about to come through!” His excitement was palpable. His jargon, though, was confusing.
I thumbed through my memories to try and identify what train a NMT might be. I remembered the ill-fated HS3 and wondered if I had misheard. ‘HST: High speed train?’ I wondered. I was wrong.
“It’ll be here in a minute – the flying banana!”* He gushed, looking hugely pleased and excited. Then he turned to stare up the track, straining for a sight of the flying banana. I made a guess that the train would be yellow.
Then the rails began to vibrate, the sound that seems to herald a small scale spaceship, took full effect, and the young guy leaned towards the line and began waving his right hand in a friendly greeting to the driver.
Moments later the flying banana was upon us, bright yellow, two engines and five coaches.
The driver didn’t wave - didn’t acknowledge his admirer, kept his hands on the wheel, presumably at ten to two. Mind on the job, not on the fans.
The spotter watched, in delight, as the train flashed past. Only when the last part of it had gone, and the vibrating rail noise had grown into a dull stillness did he turn to look at me.
“Hell…fire…” he said, his voice low and guttural. Awe struck.
Then, suddenly, he was moving again, “have a good trip!” he said, and bounded off. Out of my life forever. Him and the flying banana.
*I later thought to look it up. The Flying Banana, so called, is an NMT, a ‘New Measurement Train’ - a train that travels up and down the railway tracks of England looking for problems with the line.
‘Saturday columns’ are short, (relatively) funny, basically true* stories of mundanity and mishaps from my life.
*Some names, locations and other details may have been changed to protect the guilty.
We should all take pleasure in the small things in life.