Daniel Defoe's Railway Journey E-Book

Stuart Campbell

• Herausgeber: Sandstone Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 507

Beschreibung

Daniel Defoe's Railway Journey describes the odyssey undertaken by two eccentric pensioners as they travel on every mile of railway track in the UK. Surreal and poignant by turns, Stuart Campbell describes the people they meet and the unwanted adventures that befall them. He is aided and abetted by the ghost of Daniel Defoe, writer, soldier, businessman and spy who completed his own journey in the 1720s.

Leseprobe

Stuart Campbell is a full-time writer, a native of Edinburgh now living in Glasgow. He has worked as an English teacher and Advisor in the Lothians, and as a part-time manager with Health in Mind, an Edinburgh-based mental health charity. He has previously written for the BBC, The Guardian and the Scottish Book Collector. He is the editor of RLS in Love, an anthology of Robert Louis Stevenson’s love poetry, and author of Boswell’s BusPass, a travelogue of modern Scotland following in the footsteps of Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, as well as the acclaimed novels John McPake and the Sea Beggars and The Aeronaut’s Guide to Rapture. Stuart Campbell is married to Morag and has four grown-up children.

By thesame author

RLS in Love

Boswell’s Bus Pass

John McPake and the Sea Beggars

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

Dochcarty Road

Dingwall

Ross-shire

IV15 9UG

Scotland

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without theexpress written permission of the publisher.

Copyright © Stuart Campbell2017

Editor: K.A. Farrell

The moral right of StuartCampbell to be recognised as the author of this workhas been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design andPatent Act, 1988.

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

ISBN: 978-1-910985-70-0

ISBNe: 978-1-910985-71-7

Cover design by Mark Ecob

Ebook compilation

Acknowledgements

I must thank John, my friend and travelling companion, without whose organisational skills and patience this book would not have happened. I also acknowledge Roy’s gentle encouragement and advice. Most of all I am extremely grateful to the 250 innocent passengers who willingly shared their stories with an eccentric OAP.

Contents

Title

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Journey One: The North East of England

Journey Two: The East Midlands and East Anglia

Journey Three: South East England

Journey Four: South West England

Journey Five: West Midlands and South Wales

Journey Six: Essex, Sussex, Mid and North Wales

Journey Seven: The North West of England

Journey Eight: The North of Scotland

Journey Nine: The Scottish Borders and Fife

Prologue

Every mile of railway in mainland Britain. Ridiculous.

This was the thought that woke me in the middle of the night. The feeling was one of panic and disbelief at my own stupidity.

The rest of the night was spent dreaming of spiders; huge buggers crawling over my hand. Eventually their black thread legs morphed into veins. A vast matrix of pulsing capillaries along which I was committed to travelling. Each bent gossamer of blood represented a journey that I would make. By a process of dreamer’s alchemy, my hand melted into a map of the UK. My thumb elongated into Cornwall. My middle finger followed the Pennines and stretched up towards Caithness.

My heart seemed to be beating faster than usual. There was still an element of panic in the thought of what lay ahead. This was not a sanitised itinerary chosen by TV executives. This was to be an act of attrition, an obsessive daunting voyage along every mile of accessible rail track. This was going to hurt.

My motivation for this monstrous task remained a mystery. Partially, I was seduced by an image of myself as a chronicler of the mundane and the surreal; a jovial and eccentric completest; an older sort of Blue Peter presenter who would engage complete strangers in jolly banter in exchange for their secrets.

I knew that talking to strangers would be the key to what I hoped to achieve. To an extent, we all talk to strangers, in bus queues, in shops. We have unwanted functional exchanges with unknown people working in call centres; difficult exchanges with traffic wardens and HMRC officials; pleasant exchanges with moonlighting students who take our orders in cafes. But our busy and troubled times offer few opportunities to listen for any length of time, and without judgement, to the thoughts and preoccupations of strangers. In the main our conversations are confined to family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues.

I have fond memories of hitch-hiking the length of Britain from my home in Gloucestershire to my university in Aberdeen in the 1960s. The M6 was unfinished and the M5 only existed in a dreaming architect’s pipe. On occasions, when I was feeling seriously homesick, the journey would devour most of the weekend and permit me no more than a quick cup of coffee with my parents before I set off again. But the journey itself was the thing.

Hitch-hiking was an accepted phenomenon; an innocent pursuit untrammelled by tabloid tales of vulnerable people being dismembered and left in ditches. Lorry drivers were the undisputed kings of the road and could pick up whom they wished without fear of dismissal for sharing their cab with non-company employees. And the tales. Truckers, travelling salesmen, and men working away from home, would pour out their hearts to this innocent eighteen-year-old who knew nothing about infidelity, or marital troubles. It was as if my presence alone provided a catalyst for confessional monologues and lengthy anecdotes about politics (I only had the vaguest notion who Enoch Powell was). And of course football, about which I knew much more.

Having climbed down from a warm cab I would stand in a lay-by, reeling from the latest weight of disclosure and trenchant views, and hold out my thumb in the direction of whichever driver next felt the need to unburden himself.

Even then I reflected on what this meant. To an extent we can choose our identity, or at least accentuate those aspects of our personality with which we are most at ease, when talking to a stranger whom we will never see again. This is not to impute deception, rather it is to acknowledge that, on occasions, there are therapeutic advantages to be gained from stepping away from the mundane preoccupations that consume us all, and project more of the person we would like to be for the benefit of a stranger.

I wanted to recreate these discussions by travelling across the entire rail network of this island, and see what I could glean about people. It is arrogant to imply that somehow I wanted to take the pulse of the nation by talking to strangers on trains, but to an extent this was the truth.

I had few preconceptions as to the mechanics of engaging random strangers in conversation. I had rehearsed a few potential opening gambits in my head: ‘Hello, I’m writing a book. Tell me about your life.’ ‘Do you come here often? I mean, do you travel on this train often?’ ‘Hello, do you have a moment to tell me your secret preoccupations, your ambitions, your dreams . . .’ This was going to be problematic.

From the years spent working as a mental health professional I liked to think that I could give something back to any strangers who were willing to tell me about their lives. I would be an attentive listener; I would do my best to listen with empathy and without judgement to whatever they chose to tell me. Research has consistently shown that being listened to non-judgementally is such a rare phenomenon as to carry therapeutic benefit. This would be the least I could do for the travellers who might contribute to this book.

There was another problem; despite an extrovert persona I remain inveterately shy, and genuinely find it difficult talking to strangers. This will be a challenge then.

There was of course a darker reason for wanting to embark on endless train journeys. Part of me has always felt the need, at all costs, to keep moving; to avoid being found out or held to account, for what I didn’t know.

Perhaps I wanted to leave false tracks for the Grim Reaper; keep one step ahead, make him miss his train, ‘Sorry Sir, we can’t accept scythes in Lost Property . . . against the terms and conditions.’

When all was said and done, I am a baby boomer turned twilighter who had never actually believed he would be this age. Apart from anything else, cowardice forbad me backing out. I had told everybody about my plans and milked their respectful if bewildered incredulity.

In the early hours, it all just seemed silly and indulgent. I could hear John, my travelling companion, moving about in the house. He would probably punch me if I said that, despite his meticulous planning, I didn’t really fancy it after all.

There was a third member of our party; I was bringing along one of my literary heroes, Daniel Defoe. After writing Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders in the early 18th century, Defoe published A Tour Through the Whole Island of GreatBritain. The facsimile title page provides more detail:

As a manifesto that would do for me. Defoe’s journeys were published in a series of thirteen letters. The chronology of his tours is largely fabricated, and some of the detail is either borrowed or fictitious; a man after my own heart then.

This aspect of his writing deserves further consideration. Defoe would have struggled with the distinction between fact and fiction; the notion of discrete genres would have confused him. He was even reluctant to admit that Robinson Crusoe was a work of fiction. In his preface he maintains that ‘The Editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.’ This was not a disingenuous literary ploy; such stratagems belong to the century after his. He knew that good storytelling contains universal truths about which there is nothing fictitious, and it was this certainty that led him to exploit ambiguity across genres.

In a more modest way I intend to do something similar in my own account. I would argue that when we listen to someone’s tale we automatically create a context to better understand what we are being told. To an extent we cannot help but embellish what we hear. We may reflect afterwards and imagine how things may have turned out. At best, our mind wanders. What is this if not fiction? By way of a small experiment I intend to include some of these embellishments in my narrative.

The world into which Defoe was born in 1660 was in flux. The Renaissance, Restoration and Revolution had changed things forever. The old feudal order was giving way to capitalism. The country was changing, a new London was emerging after the ravages of plague and fire. New ideas in agriculture were taming the countryside while whole forests were being sacrificed on the altar of shipbuilding.

In his account, Defoe obsesses with the details of Britain’s trade with Europe while stepping more lightly around the contentious issue of the Union between England and Scotland. In these respects at least he would have felt strangely at home in this part of the 21st century.

In addition to being a prodigious chronicler of these islands before the onset of the industrial revolution, and ultimately a novelist, Daniel Defoe was also a spy, politician, polemicist and prolific pamphleteer.

Although he seemed quite contained within the 700-odd pages of my well-thumbed Penguin Classic, there was no guarantee that a spirit so passionate, curious and contradictory would be happy to stay there for long.

Journey One The North East of England

Day One

Bellgrove Glasgow – Edinburgh Waverley – Newcastle – Carlisle – Leeds – Ilkley – Bradford – Leeds

As we stood in the early morning cold on Bellgrove station in the East End of Glasgow, more doubts crowded in. What if, by failing to concentrate now, I was to miss something of importance? At all costs then, I must concentrate. I must observe my surroundings as if I had never seen them before.

We stepped onto the first train. The moment should have felt more significant than it did. Our journey was under way.

Concentrate. Concentrate on Shettleston Juniors football ground. Not a venue for the faint-hearted where even the dogs fight each other, and half time amputations are not uncommon.

Concentrate on the showman’s estate that lines the track from Carntyne, housing the largest concentration of showmen in Europe. Neat chalets adorned with Doric pillars stand cheek by jowl next to mothballed Wurlitzers and hot dog vans.

Concentrate on the linguistic implications of Coatbridge Sunnyside; the finest oxymoron since Milton’s ‘darkness visible’.

Perhaps I should say something about John, my large travelling companion with whom I was, for better or worse, destined to spend the next forty days. We have known each other since university in Aberdeen. Now a hermit on a farm in the north of Scotland, he told me this was the first time in nearly half a century that he had travelled for any length of time with another human being. A retired secondary head teacher, John has spent many years developing an impressive capacity for facts and opinions. One of the great mysteries of this adventure was how long we could survive in each other’s company without falling out.

So much for concentrating. As we slid alongside Princes Street Gardens into Waverley I realised that I had stopped concentrating several miles back and had, like everyone else on the train, let my thoughts wander without purpose or focus. I had not thought of anything clever or smart to say. By way of mitigation: I had travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh many hundreds of times before. Every mile was familiar and stale.

Without warning, Defoe burst from page 576! The cloying reek of civet from his perfumed wig filled the carriage. ‘I was right,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘About the stale swamp beneath the castle. Were the loch filled up, as it might easily be, the City might have extended upon the plain below, and Edinburgh could be the fairest city in the realm . . .’

‘Full marks for prophecy.’

‘And look at the buildings! No blowing of tiles about the streets to knock people on the head as they pass; no stacks of chimneys and gable ends falling to bury the inhabitants in the ruins as we so often find in England.’

According to a large screen above the concourse, 1490 accidents had occurred at railway stations in the United Kingdom in the last year. At that moment, a small toddler tipped himself out of his pram and sprawled howling in front of me, and a CCTV camera nodded in our direction as if saying ‘told you so.’

‘Platform 12,’ said John.

Defoe was tugging at my sleeve. ‘Let us proceed to the High Street which is perhaps, the largest, longest, and finest street for buildings and number of inhabitants, not in Britain only, but in the world.’

‘No time. We’ve got a train to catch.’

‘Who are you talking to?’ asked John.

‘Just myself, I’m fine-tuning my perfect prose.’

John snorted.

Defoe snorted.

The man across the aisle on the Newcastle cross-country smelled. ‘I got a good shot through her legs,’ he said to his thin, equally unsavoury companion.

I stared straight ahead. This wasn’t happening. It was too early in the journey. I was still at the stage of playing with the existential concept of peeling back the layers of identity that surround strangers. By subtle eavesdropping and intense scrutiny, I would unravel all manner of subliminal betrayals and vulnerabilities among the itinerant population. I would plunder their stories and somehow make my own soul the richer. But not this.

‘I spent ages in that bog,’ he continued. The woman opposite clutched her scarf to her mouth, appalled by this shameless admission of sexual perversity.

‘Legs like matchsticks,’ he said. ‘Sublime. Ardea cinerea at her finest. With a sprat in her mouth. Beautiful bird.’

‘Not as beautiful as the Solan Goose,’ chipped in Defoe. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to the Bass Rock on the horizon. ‘The Solan Geese are the principal inhabitants . . . As they live on fish, so they taste like fish, together with their being so exceeding fat, makes them, in my opinion, a very coarse dish, rank, and ill relished, and soon gorging the stomach.’

‘A haven for pirates,’ he continued, as the Bass Rock gradually disappeared behind us. ‘After the Revolution, a little desperate crew of people got possession of it; and having a large boat, which they hoisted up into the rock, committed several piracies, took a great many vessels, and held out the last of any place in Great Britain.’

Bending over to reach a packet of cheese and onion crisps for John, the trolley attendant revealed a tiny leather holster on his belt containing a hand sanitiser. I could only assume that the company had capitulated to the rail unions and agreed to provide protection for its staff against the dirt and grime of its passengers. Mercifully the germ Taser remained sheathed although its owner looked nervous after handling several coins.

I was watching the long ribbon of the North Sea, waiting for the appearance of Lindisfarne which duly arrived a mile off the Northumberland coast, an enigmatic sliver of land with a castle at its tip, achingly distant from the main line.

The guard played a tape of monastic plainchant over the tannoy and asked passengers to lend a hand to those pilgrims too frail to place their staffs in the overhead racks. I looked at the sky for signs of the whirlwinds, lightning and fiery dragons that were omens of a less than friendly visit from the Vikings in AD 793. The clouds looked benign.

Nothing moves on the undulating land. The tractors are still and the sheep seem to be cast in stone. The brown fields rise and fall with the yellow broom. An air sea rescue helicopter hovers near the coast. All of the horses are wearing coats.

‘Can I talk to you?’ I take a risk, walk down the carriage and intrude into the world of the woman in her seventies sitting on her own. I invade her thoughts.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I’m not a very interesting person.’

She listens patiently as I explain my strange mission, though I keep to myself any thoughts of garnering people’s souls.

‘I went on a good journey once,’ she said. ‘It took me four years between 2008 and 2012. You see, my husband had died and I lost all my confidence. I knew that unless I did something, I would never get it back. So I went on a walk. From Lands’ End to John O’Groats. Not in one go, you understand, but in chunks. 847 miles but it was probably more as I did my best to avoid roads. I preferred cycle and canal paths . . .’

I dared not ask, but wanted to know if her husband had been with her every step of the way. Had she got cross with him? Had she spoken out loud? Had she shouted at him as she walked down the hedgerows? After all, how dare he leave her? Had she picked berries and offered him some? Had she moved to one side of the stile so he could sit down next to her?

Had she felt unsafe?

‘Only once. On the outskirts of Larkhall here in Scotland. I could see these youths halfway down the path. It was narrow and I would have drawn attention to myself if I had turned and run. They had bottles and were drinking. It sounds silly but I put the SIM card from my phone down my knickers. What if they stole the phone and I lost all my contacts? Anyway, I braced myself for the worst. And do you know what? They were lovely. They were worried about me walking on my own and insisted on accompanying me to a park where there was a statue of a famous footballer. They told me the whole story. They must have thought I was their gran. Anyway, they made a point of giving me their phone numbers so I could phone them later and tell them I was safe.’

I thanked her for the story and returned to John. ‘The Morpeth Curve,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Reputed to be the most severe curve of any main railway line in Britain. The track turns approximately 98 degrees from a north-westerly to an easterly direction immediately west of the station.’

I wasn’t listening. Part of me was still walking the highways and byways of Britain with the Lost Boys of Larkhall.

Welcome distraction was provided by an announcement. ‘If there is a Mr Alexander Goldsmith on the train could he please make himself known to the conductor when he carries out a full ticket inspection.’ At that moment the train lurched to the left and my copy of A Tour fell to the floor. I bent down to pick it up.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Alexander Goldsmith? Isn’t that one of the aliases you adopted on your last visit to Scotland? I remember now. You were a passionate advocate of the union of 1707 and travelled North of the border as ‘a spy’. Isn’t that right? The mob discovered your address and threw rocks at your window.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ said a small voice.

‘We are now approaching Newcastle. Will all passengers . . .’

There was a solitary trainspotter on Platform 4. Having time on our hands I resolve to interrogate him within an inch of his life. My questions are ready. Why do you do this? Do you think your natural maturation has been inhibited somehow? How many notebooks do you fill in any year?

Fortunately, perhaps, the trainspotter spared himself this ordeal by disappearing. The platform simply opened up and swallowed him although he might well have been squirreled out of sight by his protective peers and taken to a place of safety for vulnerable adults.

I feel guilty realising that I was quite prepared to make narrative capital from late middle-aged trainspotters with flask and notebook; men still trapped in part of their boyhoods that had perhaps promised much, and then disappointed.

My attention wanders to an elderly couple holding hands in a queue next to the information kiosk. Waiting patiently, they have many questions. Where have all the past years gone? Why have our children grown apart from us? Can we use our senior railcards before nine o’clock? Do you believe there is a God?

The Tyne Valley train dragged itself out of the station and passed a commune of pigeon lofts. A quick search on my phone reveals Pigeon Chat on YouTube, ‘following the lives of three courageous pigeons in their daily fight against man’, and an invitation to join Pigeon Craic! Ireland’s Ultimate Pigeon Resource. Later perhaps.

On a pigeon website, a man called Ronnie describes a chilling attack on his beloved tipplers by three Peregrine Falcons; another posts a picture of two deformed birds under the heading ‘Don’t tell me my boys are ugly’. Then a John D attempts to break my heart by describing how he’d found a baby pigeon that had frozen to death . . . but wait . . . ‘I reached down and picked up the cold hard little body, and was about to throw it into the ravine when I felt a slight movement in my hand . . .’

After skirting the car park wasteland of the Metro Centre, we follow the equally grey mud flats of the Tyne. Eventually the flats slap themselves into the shape of a proper river that supports the upper torsos of several fishermen.

On the approach to Carlisle from the East, ancient woodlands tumble towards small streams and duck under stone bridges.

We pass through Wetheral, a commuter village which, despite its bijou appearance, has known difficult days. TheTimes of 14th December 1836 described in graphic detail ‘the dreadful accident (which) occurred on the Newcastle and Carlisle railway by which three persons lost their lives and a great deal of property was damaged . . . two boys aged fourteen and sixteen, who had stowed away in a horse wagon, were found crushed to death. The head of the elder youth was crushed quite flat, and presented a frightful spectacle.’

Alighting from the train at Carlisle our attention was grabbed by Billy, a Train Presentation Leader, addressing us from a lurid poster next to the toilet door. ‘Did you know,’ asks Billy, ‘A lawnmower, a park bench and a coffin are just some of the unusual items that have been left on UK trains?’ No I didn’t.

The Carlisle to Settle line through the Yorkshire Dales deserves its reputation for stunning beauty. Our enjoyment was enhanced by being adopted by one of the Friends who act as unpaid tour guides on the line. Alarmingly, she was wearing a crocheted map of the route complete with drystane dykes, small farm steadings and lumpy little sheep that we were invited to touch. It was a challenge to align the sights visible from the window with the 3D mirror image on her chest. She became especially animated when we stopped at Kirkby Stephen.

‘Look out for the macaws,’ she declaimed excitedly. ‘They came from nowhere and settled quite happily in the trees next to the fire station.’

‘That could be a parakeet,’ said John, pointing. ‘Or a raquet-tailed drongo.’ The woman ignored the provocation but changed tack.

‘Over there,’ she said, ‘were the camps where the navvies lived. Over a thousand settled in the shantytowns which they named after Crimean War victories. The three main ones were Inkerman, Sebastopol and Jericho. Two hundred died either from the smallpox or from injuries incurred while labouring on the line . . . They had their own schools, and a hospital, and a missionary they called the parson. But they fought a lot. With bare knuckles.’

She then drew our attention to the highest station toilet in Britain and became quite lyrical about the knitters of Dent, all of whom presumably crocheted their own jumpers.

We were distracted from the plight of oxygen-starved passengers gasping for breath in the gents, by the guard who announced in sad and apologetic tones, that owing to an equipment failure he would be unable to either issue tickets or accept payment. Essentially this was now a free train. This was concessionary travel at its finest.

The guard however soon had his hands full wrestling with a small ferrety-eyed young man with red hair. ‘I don’t care if you are Branwell Brontë,’ he said, ‘and that it was you what wrote Wuthering Heights, I’m putting you off at the next stop!’

Branwell tore the cork out of a stone bottle and downed the contents before belching loudly in the guard’s face. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, living with those harridans . . .’

‘Next stop. And you can bloody well walk to Haworth.’

‘I approve,’ said Defoe.

‘Of what?’

‘The introduction of invention to augment your account.’

Away from the scenery and the poignancy of abandoned hill farms, our train lowered its undercarriage and started its slow descent towards Keighley and Leeds. A feature of this part of the journey was the proliferation of sewage farms. A honeycomb of circular tanks had conquered the landscape, each being conscientiously swept by a languid arm pushing the sludge sideways in a hypnotic choreo-graphy.

As part of a related leitmotif, the railway embankments on the approach to Leeds had all been requisitioned as auxiliary landfill sites: armchairs, prams and general domestic detritus tumbled downwards towards the track. It was Osbert Sitwell who sneeringly referred to trains as ’slums on wheels’, but it wasn’t the carriages, at least not on this trip, it was the toxic route they followed.

A young girl with red hair passed through the carriage clutching a green tank holding a single goldfish.

The train announcer on the Leeds to IIkley Sprinter was endowed with the richest RP accent audible this side of a 1950s public service broadcast. He effortlessly offered plummy reassurances concerning punctuality and catering to all who hankered for the certainties of Empire and Ovaltine. In the distance a flurry of doves stood out against the black clouds which were in turn dissected by a rainbow.

We left Ilkley station and wandered into the car park. The main archway was flanked by two women distributing The Watchtower. Before the week was out we were to pass through many stations being guarded by a similar phalanx of proselytisers; Jehovah’s hierarchy having chosen to target depressed and tired commuters on the not unreasonable assumption that they must be desperate for spiritual solace.

I decided to counter my own prejudiced atheism with healthy research. I know I could have asked them about their beliefs but took the coward’s way out, leaned against a wall and used my phone to browse 10 Things You Never KnewAbout Jehovah’s Witnesses. Thing number 9 was their objection to the cross as a Christian symbol because it is regarded (by whom?) as a historical representation of the male genitalia and thus coupling of the reproductive organs.

‘Worshippers of Satan!’ shouted Defoe who emerged from the gents fastening his breeches.

‘What about religious tolerance?’

‘Pestilential heretics! Why are you subverting the Word of God? May their nethers be slowly roasted in the fires of hell!’

Outside Shipley, several towers dominate a scrap yard. The first is constructed from the cubes of crushed cars much loved by gangsters and the makers of cheap thrillers. Its neighbour is more impressive consisting of many hundreds of old mattresses. For a moment I see all of the lovers who once inhabited them, sprawled and spread-eagled, some naked, some in pyjamas, all clinging like starfish to the side of the cascade, doing their utmost to resist the final ignominious fall. I hear their voices;

Do you still love me?

Have you wound the clock?

Was that the cat?

Don’t leave me.

Did your team win?

Did you hear from the girls?

We pass beneath the walls of Bradford City’s Valley Parade stadium, scene of the worst fire disaster in the history of English football. On 11th May 1985, fifty-six lives were lost and at least 265 people were injured. Over 6000 people attended a multi-denominational service part of which was held in Urdu and Punjabi. A giant Christian cross made from burnt beams was erected in front of the stand.

‘I remember very well what I saw with a sad heart, though I was but young, I mean the fire of London.’

‘You were only six at the time, weren’t you? Your father’s house was spared, but only just, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, but no more mention of fires I pray.’

On the outskirts of Leeds a single white swan was gliding serenely down a canal.

Day Two

Leeds – Cleethorpes – Barton-on-Humber – Hull – Scarborough – York – Leeds (via Harrogate)

I awoke from a dream of Jericho. Some of the men had risked dismissal by defying the ganger. Resting their tools against the side of the trench they climbed onto the track that led back to the camp. Several posters had already been torn down by the younger boys who wanted them as souvenirs, and parson Edwards had wisely abandoned his sermon about turning the other cheek. Irish Leary would be no match for Black Jack, the mulatto from Doncaster. The men were drunk and the women loud.

The crowd funnelled its way between the huts onto a patch of hardened earth where shouts and taunts reached a crescendo as Jack, his skin glistening, stepped over the rope and flexed his muscles. Roared on by her peers, one of the women stepped forward and presented him with a lit clay pipe. He bit off the narrow stem, ostentatiously chewed it and spat the white bones onto the ground. He then placed the burning bowl in his mouth and made as if to swallow it. The crowd roared and . . . John knocked loudly on my door.

People-watching on the concourse of Leeds station was irresistible and easy. With upwards of forty trains scheduled to leave within the hour, the human tide became a tsunami at the narrowest point. Sikhs in shades, hipsters in beards, a blind man following his stick with a rotating white ball at its point, Lycra-skinned cyclists, wheelchairs and at least two military moustaches. On the periphery, a couple argued, she in tears, he aggressively pointing. Leave him, you deserve better, it’s not your fault.

Two lovers were parting as lovers should, in an achingly long embrace. A strikingly tall woman, wreathed in smiles, strode happily towards her train. A magician in a business suit pressed a button on his compact metal luggage whereupon it transformed itself into a fully-grown bike. Applause.

A large orange hand waddled into the tide. A pretty face emerged beneath the forefinger, and a hand from within the hand dispensed leaflets urging passengers to lend a helping hand that could take the form of ‘stepping aside if there’s a whole bunch of people trying to get off the train as you’re getting on.’

We settled into the comparatively empty coach D on the train to Doncaster. This was a great mistake as the guard’s announcement made clear: ‘Coach D is not working. Could passengers sitting in seats 9 – 72 please relocate to coach C where unfortunately the seat reservations are not functioning. Could passengers in coach B also move elsewhere on the train, avoiding seats 1 – 47 in coach E as the heating system has failed. Remember, Coach D is now a locked carriage.’

This last detail elicited a frisson of pleasure. Not since the days of the old Soviet Union had passengers been locked into a carriage. Eventually the guard, Nicola, broke in and ushered us into a clearly less secure carriage.

We stopped outside Wakefield Prison, a daunting Victorian building. Strange to think that we were only a matter of yards away from 740 inmates, many of whom may have been there since the original house of correction was built in 1594.

As the train seemed reluctant to depart I looked through the thick stone walls of the prison, down the length of B wing, through more doors and into the mess hall.

Michael paused at the counter with his tray. His rheumatism was bad today. In the stainless steel trough, the cabbage had been swept to one side like seaweed on a beach while the green water leeched and puddled unappetisingly. He listened to the distant sound as the diesel units dragged themselves out of the station.

‘That’s the 3.41 to York,’ he said to the trustee who dolloped a wet pat of mashed potato onto his plate. ‘Not to worry, better times ahead.’

‘Better times ahead,’ repeated the trustee, turning his attention to the next inmate.

Defoe shrank back into his seat. He had not enjoyed this last fictional diversion and was visibly distressed by the mention of prison.

By now our replacement carriage was so cold that we anticipated the long-suffering Nicola returning with blankets and hot water bottles. We were still nursing our disappointment when we arrived once more in Doncaster.

Mindful of the advice contained in the Helping Hand leaflet, we stood back as passengers poured out of the train on the opposite platform. Despite our good manners and laudable caution, we were nearly flattened by an ugly phalanx of fat men all wearing T-shirts extolling the values of REAL BRITAIN and the Union Jack. ‘Good to see people participating in political dialogue,’ commented John.

‘These are the heroes who despise the Dutch,

And rail at new-come foreigners so much!

Forgetting that themselves are all derived

From the most scoundrel race that ever lived!

A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones,

Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns!’

‘Sometimes Danny Boy,’ I said, ‘I think you were ahead of your times.’

‘It’s from my minor masterpiece, The True-born Englishman:A Satyr, published in 1701.’

We had intended to travel directly to Cleethorpes but there were delays on the line as a passenger had been hit by a train. This was a more graphic description than is usually provided; normally the travelling public is only offered the euphemism of an ‘incident.’

Defoe was looking particularly anxious again. The cockiness he had shown just moments earlier had vanished. He said that he didn’t want to talk about it but I remembered a reference in his biography to moments of black despair when hounded by creditors. He acknowledged that he had sometimes considered ‘desperate measures’ and seemed eager to move the conversation on.

‘I saw a sight not far from here. I was passing on the ridge of a hill when I looked down the frightful precipice, and saw no less than five horses in several places, lying at the bottom with their skins off, which had, by the slipperiness of the snow, lost their feet, and fallen irrecoverably to the bottom, where the mountaineers who made light of this place, had found means to come at them and get their hides off.’

My head filled with unwanted images of dead and flayed horses, my thoughts returned to the experience of the train driver who, too late, catches a fleeting glimpse of someone standing on the track.

He wakes in the night shouting and pushing hard on the brake handle that is in fact his wife’s arm. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

On the train to Scunthorpe John treated me to a lecture on the resentment felt by commuters in the North East who believe that they are invariably the recipients of railway stock cast-offs. Allegedly, the affluent South sends its ancient and worn carriages northwards as they approach the end of their working life. This would explain the frequency with which we found ourselves in open top wagons, and why we could only leave certain trains by pulling on a leather strap to open the window, out of which we lean to turn the handle.

The landscape changed rapidly; the dales and moors belonged to a different country. The land itself had been reduced to an irrelevant ribbon beneath enormous skies. We crossed a canal that shrank into vanishing points on either side of the track. The sheer emptiness was alleviated only by the ubiquitous wind farms.

This too changed as we gradually entered a vista of urban decay with all colour leached from the canvas. Cooling towers lurched and pylons leant. Bulldozers scraped at the sides of spoil heaps and, yes, a rash of sewage farms was breaking out again. At least the day’s Guardian cast some light on their proliferation. It has little to do with poor eating habits and the related consequences of obesity and sewage production, rather it is a largely untapped source of wealth. Evidently sewage sludge contains gold, silver and platinum that would be seen as commercially viable by prospectors. Look before you flush.

‘A manufacturing opportunity not to be scorned. I attempted something similar myself back in 1692. I knew money to be made from cats . . .’

Despite my bemusement, I was glad that he was in better spirits.

‘Cats. More specifically, their arses. As you know, the Dutch perfected making musk from the anal glands of civet cats. I spent £850 for the animals but sadly they were confiscated by my creditors.’

Mercifully, Defoe crept back into the book and pulled the pages over his head.

Wealth and poverty nudged against each other in Grimsby docks as collapsing fish warehouses overlooked the yachts in the marina, most of which presumably belonged to sewage millionaires.

We arrived in Cleethorpes, and gazed at the black and white photos taken with a Brownie and neatly slotted into an album. One showed steam locomotives with their excursion trains queuing outside the station. Although a little out of focus, another captured an entire beach colonised by families sheltering behind hired deckchairs and improvised windbreaks. Excited kids were bailing out the North Sea using enamelled buckets, while their parents discussed the cost of ice cream and when it would be safe to return to the B & B.

The sun was shining and several arcades were open. I gifted John a heap of coppers so that we could both play on the Penny Falls. He beat me, the bugger. The pain of my defeat was made more palatable by the Batman theme and Oh I Do Like tobe Beside the Seaside.

In the café where we had our lunch, a woman shared with us the medical history of her dog who seemed unnaturally interested in John’s leg, ‘He’s got a hole in his skull. It affects his spine. He’s on medication.’

As we left Cleethorpes for Barton-on-Humber well-wishers lined up at the level crossing as if we were a liberating army, or John was the Pope. The comparison reminded me that when at University, John had frequently written to both the Pope and the Queen offering them advice on a variety of topics.

‘A vomit of popery!’ declared Defoe for whom the reference to Catholicism had been a provocation too far.

‘What a terrible phrase. We have moved on you know.’

‘The image is central to my much-lauded reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover.’

As the train consisted of a single carriage, we couldn’t escape the inordinately loud woman proudly descended from a long line of town criers. She regaled her deafened companion with her views on MRI scans (she didn’t see the point), mortgages (quite ridiculous) and as for council tax . . . plus every other trivial topic under the sun. Eventually her friend left, quite possibly to drown herself in the toilet.

John was asleep but Defoe was shaking his head. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘You are an eavesdropper plundering words not meant for your ears. Go and talk to these agreeable travellers.’ He nodded in the direction of a middle-aged couple sitting along one side of a table.

I didn’t think very much of being ordered about by a Figment, but grudgingly sat opposite them. After my hesitant introduction, the man declared that he had always wanted to write a book. ‘This could be the next best thing,’ I suggested.

‘I’m a rat catcher. A pest controller if you like, but I’ve seen it all. And it’s not just rats. Squirrels is worse. How do you kill them? That is the question.’

I quite liked this surreal adaptation of Hamlet.

‘Squirrel traps don’t work, although I’ve had success with a feral cat-trap baited with peanut butter. The textbook says to shoot them between the eyes. Thing is, I can’t bring myself to kill them at all. I take them miles into the country and release them. I got an emergency call out once, and was surprised to see an ambulance had got to this man’s house before me. The owner had managed to catch the rat between a curtain and the lining. Of course, the rat sunk its teeth into the man’s hand and he was bleeding his life away. The social services called me out to see an old man who had suffered a heart attack. Thing was, he was shimmering with bed bugs and the paramedics wouldn’t intervene until they had been given protective suits. After they moved the old fellow out, they found thousands of infested bank notes.’

I felt increasingly queasy but it was his wife who excused herself first and ran to the toilet. I would have assumed that she was immune to her husband’s horror tales.

‘A landlord called me out to investigate the smell in his flat. These students had grown so fond of the rats in their kitchen, they encouraged them as pets and fed them bread. Another flat was a foot deep with pigeon shit in which the rats lived . . . I met this family whose flat was piled to the celling with black sacks of rubbish. In the sitting room they had cleared a square metre which they shared with a huge flat-screened TV. Social services had no idea as the small boy was dressed and cleaned by his granny every day before being sent to school. As for cockroaches . . .’

I held up my phone and shrugged, trying hard to imply that I had to take an urgent call and returned to my seat. By now Defoe was shaking with mirth.

‘Rats are not the only carriers of plague. If I can quote you a passage from the orders Concerning Infected Houses and persons Sick from the Plague, issued in 1666 . . .’

‘If you must.’

‘ . . .no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or conies, be suffered to be kept in any part of the city, the owners will be punished according to the act of Common Council and that the dogs be killed by the dog-killers appointed for that purpose . . .’

I thought of asking what a conie was, and I was intrigued by the notion of dog killers, but on balance thought it best not to engage with him further.

As we skirted a string of lagoons John supplied the unwanted information that New Holland was the home of the combine harvester. I think he had too much excitement at the arcade. I did my best to calm him before wondering idly if Hull Paragon Station would live up to its name. It didn’t.

Defoe interjected a bizarre fact of his own. ‘They show us still in the town hall at Hull, the figure of a northern fisherman, supposed to be of Greenland. He was taken up at sea in a leather boat, which he sate in, and was covered with skins, which drew together about his waist, so that the boat could not fill and he could not sink; the creature would never feed nor speak, and so died.’

I was lost for words and wanted more than anything to go home. What had I done to deserve the travelling companions from hell? Deciding to ignore them, I concentrated on the sky, where cloud formations swept like retreating armies over the horizon. The foremost tumbling angrily, punching holes in a timid firmament. At ground level the puffy cumulus offered only token resistance. The smoke from their cannons hovered innocuously.

Refreshed by this small change to my consciousness, I turned my attention once more to what was happening inside the carriage. The elderly woman in the seat opposite laid out an entire winning hand of train tickets accumulated over a lifetime of travel.

‘It’s here somewhere,’ she said. Baulking at the challenge of sorting through the trove of eclectic railway memorabilia, the guard promised to return, but didn’t. The woman smiled knowingly.

What she had failed to notice was that her male companion might well have shuffled off this mortal coil. He was certainly a strange colour. I did wonder what the protocol was if a passenger died when in transit, in sic transitgloria mundi in fact. Perhaps he would be discreetly draped in a Northern Rail tea towel until the next station.

Our carriage stopped in Seamer Station opposite a poster introducing us to Dave, who was our stationmaster for the duration of our sojourn in his kingdom. He seemed avuncular but with a demeanour tinged with melancholy; someone to whom one could turn in a crisis.

At the very end of the platform was a small plantation of gnomes and a rabbit. Outside, a solitary Clydesdale horse plodded through the rain.

Defoe put down the copy of the Review he was working on as we approached Scarborough to pass comment on the local mineral waters.

‘It is hard to describe their taste, they are apparently tinged with a collection of mineral salts, as of vitriol, alum, iron, and perhaps sulphur . . . Here is such a plenty of all sorts of fish that I have hardly seen the like, and in particular, here we saw turbots of three quarters of a hundred weight, and yet their flesh eat exceedingly well when taken new.’

Perhaps a fish supper later then.

The most disturbing image from the Scarborough to York train was of a man standing in the middle of a field digging a large hole while his dog stood patiently by. Mercifully the train would be out of sight when he chose to strike his faithful but incontinent pet round the head with a shovel and tumble him into his grave.

This unwelcome interpretation stayed with me. Of course, I may have misread the situation; perhaps the spade was in fact a metal detector and the dog was his best friend. But in my head I heard the man explaining to his friend in the pub what had happened.

‘I almost did it. I almost killed him. I felt such anger. But I couldn’t do it. I hate the way he pisses on the floor. My slippers were soaked again this morning. But it’s not just that. He reminds me of Maude. She loved that dog more than me. She used to talk to him about me. Can you believe that? She would speak in this stupid wheedling confiding way as if the bloody dog was on her side. She would tickle him under the chin. “I deserve better, don’t you think?” Why didn’t she take him when she left? It makes no sense. Anyway, I took a shovel, to bury him like, after. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. What’s that? Yes, thanks, I’ll take another pint.’

Having been dozing for several hours, John rallied and unhelpfully decided to deliver a brief lecture on the history of York Minster. ‘It caught fire in 741,’ he boomed. ‘Was damaged by William the Conqueror in 1069, attacked during the Civil War, was subject to an arson attack in 1829, caught fire again in 1840, and was struck by lightning in 1984.’

Defoe covered his ears. ‘No more fires, I beseech you.’

Completely unaware of Defoe’s presence, John droned on. ‘The deeply pious believed the latest fire was God’s response to the consecration of the Bishop of Durham whose heretical views included doubt about the physical resurrection of Christ. Yea, the clouds partedand a vengeful God sent down his lightning bolt proclaiming “don’t you dare refer to me as a skypixie! Take that, you resurrection-denying bastard!”’

Defoe sat bolt upright and pointed an admonitory finger in my direction. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I know that as a protestant dissenter you have strong opinions on these matters, but frankly, I don’t want to hear them. Back into your book!’

Mercifully, he went.

In York Station we were subjected to numerous exhortations to keep an eye open for thieves who apparently steal £43m worth of cabling each year. The York — Harrogate Pacer set out in the dusk. Defoe glanced at a particularly unfortunate pair of lads further down the carriage. ‘Lepers,’ he pronounced.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Take my word for it. There’s a monastery near here that takes them in. Each leper is given two pairs of shoes yearly, with every day a loaf fit for a poor man’s sustenance, half a pitcher of beer, a sufficient portion of flesh on flesh days, and three herrings on fish days.’

‘Put my name down.’

Clearly pleased with himself, Defoe closed his eyes. He wasn’t the only one. All of my fellow passengers, including John, were fast asleep. Every carriage holds one or two narcoleptics nursing hangovers or grudges against the rigours of the day, but this was unusual. Perhaps the smell seeping from the toilet had its origins in a small vial of sleeping gas. Ruefully, I remembered reading how, in some parts of Europe, thieves spray incapacitating agents on campers and train travellers. It is possible in these countries to purchase alarms that detect such perfidy.

After our flirtation with death by poisoning, we were sorely tempted by the equally fatal attraction of the Harrogate Tap, an undeniably superior station bar with its promise of ‘14 traditional cask hand pulls and 14 continental swing-handled taps set against a backdrop of over 150 different bottled world beers’. Defoe too was salivating and kept mentioning ‘Northern beer’.

‘But you’re a puritan,’ I said.

‘We abhor drunkenness,’ he said, ‘but in our view of the world, alcohol is neither a social or moral evil.’

‘Fair play.’

Day Three

Leeds – Sheffield – Gainsborough Lea Road – Wakefield – Huddersfield – Bradford – Doncaster – York – Leeds – Barnsley – Leeds

Deja vu, Groundhog Day, or more appropriately, Sliding Doors saw us back on Leeds Station concourse at the crack of dawn, where a lone fisherman swam against the tide with sheathed rod, thermos flask and welly boots, oblivious to the looks of envy from peers still ten years from retirement.

John looked up from his paper to observe that the Naked Rambler had lost another appeal. A pity, it would have been great fun to have spied him at some point on our journey, bearded and resolute, genitalia swinging free, amusing children and frightening their parents.

The sun was shining, the canals sparkled. All was well with the world and God was, or maybe wasn’t, in his heaven. In the circumstances, I was almost prepared to give Him the benefit of the doubt. The towpaths were crowded with joggers eager for vitamin D.

Both the train, littered with crumpled Metros, and its aged conductor were recovering from the rush hour. Without doubt the oldest employee on Network Rail that we had so far encountered, he was beyond ancient, and prompted the notion of a direct correlation between the age of the rolling stock and guards. Quite simply they grow old together and get scrapped together.

We passed through a station called Outward which, if nothing else, showed a singular lack of imagination.

A large bank of cloud had its origin in the twin towers of a power station.

A wheelie bin served as a wicket on a cricket pitch outside Bolton-on-Dearne.

The train doors initially refused to open at Swinton. Perhaps the town was already full and visitors were to be restricted, as happens in the Lake District during bank holidays. ‘Never mind, another time,’ suggested a stoical father, consoling his large family for whom this trip was to be the reward for much scrimping and saving.

At least 100 swans jostled for position on a canal basin outside Rotherham. The trees in the adjacent orchard were heavy with a crop of poly bags.

Sheffield station deserves its place among the top ten holiday destinations on the planet, having cultivated a niche function in attracting impoverished musicians. This piano has been provided forcustomer use. Please respect this facility. A young black lad, his trousers at lower buttock level, improvised a jazz tune which he then dedicated, with moist eyes, to all commuters everywhere.

In the car park known as Sheaf Square I wondered at the stainless steel curtain of water raised on the site of Pond Tilt forge. Several hot commuters stripped off, piled their clothes neatly on the concourse and ran happily into the cascade.

Meanwhile John had struck up a promising relationship with the woman in the coffee kiosk. I listened from the side lines as she tried to describe the excitement she felt at the prospect of the Queen’s visit the following week. ‘I don’t suppose she would want a coffee, but you never know. She looks more a tea drinker. Perhaps the Duke would take a flat white. I would happily accept Maundy money, after all I take euros. And, come to think of it, my feet could do with a good wash . . .’

‘I met them all,’ said Defoe.

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Kings and queens. I had the honour to serve, and if I may say it with humblest acknowledgements, to be beloved by that glorious prince, William III. I was subsequently presented to Queen Mary at Kensington Palace.’

I made the mistake of approaching a woman who was raising money for guide dogs, and who smiled at me conspiratorially. I told her that recently my younger son had been so impressed by how a guide dog managed to steer its owner across a particularly wet and treacherous floor in the toilet of a Glasgow pub, that he was thinking of making a contribution to the cause.

‘That’s all very well,’ she countered brusquely. ‘But what about you? You have to lead your own life. You can’t live vicariously through your son. What can you contribute?’

This is what psycho-dynamic psychotherapists do in their spare time. When I expressed a small reluctance to sign a direct debit form she treated me as if I were a puppy-strangler with a sneering attitude towards the visually impaired. I wished her well and, riddled with guilt, joined John and Daniel on the platform.

‘This town of Sheffield is very populous and large, the streets narrow, and the houses dark and black, occasioned by the continued smoke of the forges, which are always at work. Here they make all sorts of cutlery-ware, but especially that of edged-tools, knives, razors et cetera – and nails . . .’

The Sheffield to Lincoln train itself was at the forefront of a national experiment in suspension-free travel and a vigilant and attentive team of osteopaths, chiropractors and Indian head masseurs were in attendance, or should have been. A line from David Nobbs’ description of Reggie Perrin came to mind. ‘The shaking caused his socks to fall down his ankles.’

A large sign at Kiveton Bridge urged us to ‘beware of hazards at platform edge.’ Had the notice not been there, few passengers would have thought of approaching the edge. Curiosity combined with a collective death wish compelled otherwise cautious travellers to approach and marvel at the terrible things to be seen down there. Am I the only person ever to have wondered if a train would pass over me if I were to lie between the tracks? Evidently not judging by the correspondence that can be accessed on the subject via Google. Apparently, the one marginally relevant specification is that a train’s axles must clear the top of the rails by at least two and three quarter inches, so theoretically . . .

The train continued to buckle and lurch, distracting us from the looming nightmare of satanic coal-fired power stations.

A field of geriatric horses invited conflicting interpretations. Either a soft-hearted philanthropist had sunk his savings into a benign sanctuary for clapped out old nags, or a sharp young entrepreneur was greedily catering for the equine tastes of French diners.

‘Shame!’ shouted Defoe. ‘How dextrous the northern grooms and breeders are in their looking after them . . .these fellows take such indefatigable pains with them, that they bring them out, like pictures of horses, not a hair amiss . . .’

‘I don’t think we are looking at the same horses,’ I said.

A series of totally incomprehensible announcements from the guard led to John’s suggestion that the same garbled message had been introduced into all trains to cover all contingencies and all possible destinations as a time and money saving stratagem. An idea not to be dismissed out of hand.

For reasons I don’t understand, the network of canals with their floating industrial froth and cargoes of rusty trikes and drowned prams were a source of comfort to me. Hidden, neglected, melancholic, both ugly and beautiful, they are an abiding, somehow haunting, feature of the North East.

Equally neglected was the set of false teeth found under the bench on Gainsborough Lee Road station. More accurately it was a plate containing two teeth. A solitary traveller, who denied that the teeth were his, spent his days crossing the realm delivering cars with trade plates. He really wanted to open a microbrewery in Tenerife, and suggested our next journey should cover the entire Indian network.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said leaning forward conspiratorially, ‘My wife had a terrible experience of toilets on a twelve-hour journey from Luxor to Cairo . . .’ He tapped his nose knowingly, an enigmatic gesture hinting at horrors beyond words.

As we entered Doncaster again, the trainspotters were out in force. I determined not to pass up this second opportunity to resolve the mystery of why they do it? I put aside my natural shyness and approached a particularly animated knot of men in their late fifties.

‘Is something good expected?’

‘No.’

‘There does seem a lot of you today.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you had this interest for a long time?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must like trains.’

‘Yes.’

‘I pressed the wrong button!’ said one of the fifty-year-old spotters staring at the Dictaphone into which he had been solemnly intoning the numbers of each passing freight wagon. He was consoled by a friend who expressed sympathy for his loss.

So ended my pathetic attempt to unravel the mystery. John snorted at my failure.

In the bleak underpass linking the platforms I bought a flower from a sad elderly woman dressed as a daffodil. She was collecting for the Marie Curie cancer charity, and only had another two and a half hours of daffodil duty. When she smiled at me I felt I had made reparation for the guide dog incident.

A sign in the doorway of the Wakefield train instructed us ‘Not to bring more luggage than we could carry.’ Disappointed, we left the cabin trunk, wood burning stove and the set of human sized chessmen on the platform. This hint of overprotectiveness found its echo in a subsequent request to ‘bring to the attention of the conductor anything that caused you concern’.

I had a good mind to have a word with him about the African nun sitting smugly next to a large poly bag advertising a menswear shop. Why had she purchased yet another jumper for the bishop?

Equally concerning was the fact that the train was equipped with a carefully stowed wooden ladder. For what possible contingency? It could be laid across the top of a snowdrift while frozen passengers pulled themselves to safety one rung at a time, or perhaps the conductor had a side line in window cleaning. ‘Sorry madam, my train is parked at the bottom of your garden and I couldn’t help noticing the state of your bedroom windows . . .’