
4pm upon the train
From Glasgow, on the East Coast Main.
Cabers tossed and Munros bagged,
By this point we’re pretty fagged.
Still, a neighbour’s greasy cough
Makes it hard to just drop off,
Even in my dozy mood.
Perhaps if I list last week’s food
I’ll get to sleep. Like counting sheep.
And all without the need to keep
An eye upon the lamb-shank fields.
Let’s try, and see if waking yields:
Firstly, porridge, the claggy queen,
And her consort, brown Soreen
Malt loaf. And with it syrup cake,
Lentil chili, pasta bake.
Jelly babies, two per top,
Brought from Pitlochry Co-op.
By others too, in sandwich bags,
That spilt their contents on the crags.
A venison burger that I ate,
(The pescatarian diet’s gone great).
Iron-Bru to wash it down,
The soda with a granite crown.
It hasn’t worked. I’m still conscious.
And now my neck aches something monstrous.
Ah well. I’ll have to stay awake,
Stare out the glass and try to break
My personal record for consecutive hours
Spent looking out at grass and flowers.
Two minutes in, my mind’s gone wandering.
It’s bathing in the pond of pondering.
‘I’ve found some new books to admire,
Roadside Picnic’s good, Pale Fire
Has forced my words to march in time,
To adopt meter, adopt rhyme.’
I mull something I composed,
As the wall of An Stuc rose:
‘Underneath the shadowed larch
That dropped its buds in early March,
And stood, but never lived again,’
Now what’s the line I should put then?
These words alone stand packed and proud,
A hailstone in a thundercloud.
But all the rest will have to wait-
Here comes the change, eight minutes late.
It might be tight, we’ll have to dash
Over the bridge, or – faster – crash
Across the rails (best the bridge).
I make it onboard just a smidge
Before the doors close. Just as well.
Wolverhampton station’s hell.
(Unfair. I haven’t been before,
But the fit was too good to ignore).
I settle down in my new seat.
I look around. (I’m quite discreet).
I do like trains. The human race is
Scattered into pre-booked places.
See here; a couple glued to their phones.
No chat, just random laughs and groans.
An off-duty nurse out like a light.
Her toddler too, and to my right,
A typist on a laptop (Apple).
I wonder if he has to grapple
With being a kind of techno-Viking?
His free-range beard seems to his liking.
Hardware too – a PCB
Design is printed on his tee.
Nike serves nerds now. His hands
And arms are scrawled with textual bands.
Do I read more there than I should?
I’ve never really understood
Why people choose to wear tattoos.
Do they think they break taboos?
As if. Just walk down the street,
They’re on half the arms you meet.
Ok, a picture might be nice,
But for writing, wouldn’t pen suffice?
That way, when you reach fifty-one,
You can say, ‘Christ, that was dumb,
I don’t think people need to know,
That I once really loved BoJo,’
Then rub it off. No need for lasers,
Arm hair, make-up, long-sleeve blazers.
But so. Let’s see what this chap’s got
Attaching him to his laptop:
‘Who is John Galt?’ Oh, who indeed.
The facile libertarian’s creed.
‘Who is John Galt? He’s me! Me! Me!’
What else to say. Humanity
Is just a word. Freedom for all.
Though your freedom to fly is another’s to fall.
‘Baaah,’ say I, into my coat.
(Ideologies get my goat).
I look away from him. Meanwhile,
A bottle’s rolling down the aisle.
The source? The woman sat behind
Seems a somewhat timorous kind.
It’s hers, I’m sure, but I can’t see
Her asking for returned Pepsi.
Does she have a fear of strangers?
Perhaps she overstates the dangers
Of weak young me. An easy fix.
I pass it back.
When I was six,
It always seemed the hills and glens,
Were stuffed with stags and fairy wrens.
Nature, in her primal way,
Would never suffer man to stray
Into her sacred spots. TV
Showed a land pristine and free
Of any form of man-made mess.
(As for the cameraman, I guess
I assumed he wasn’t there).
Bare too – much too much to bear.
How could I ever dare to stand
Upon that alien highland,
When the café at Culloden Moor
Was close to the wildest thing I saw?
Ten years pass, by then a loch,
Was a kind of puddle in a bog.
Geography lessons taught me that
Our British Isles are rather flat.
Lake Baikal was so much better,
Older, deeper, wider, wetter.
The Munros too were sorry stumps,
Little more than whale humps.
I’d left my Scotland far behind,
Had bigger mountains in my mind.
Now I take the middle path,
Between fear and the laugh
Of contempt. It’s hard to feel
How stats relate to what seems real.
A fall will kill you just as sure
If it’s from thirty feet or more.
I’ve been back. It’s hardly home
These days, but now I’m free to roam
About that land that once seemed far
Too wild for me to walk. A star
Is just a fire far away.
The upshot? I’m not sure I’d say
That Scotland’s great. But Scotland’s fine.
Hills and heather – not quite sublime.
No doubt I’ll change. No doubt it too.
Mine’s a wavering point of view.
When I’m eighty, who can see,
How cataracted lochs will look to me.
But here we are, home at last,
In Oxford, back by quarter past.