The Train Pulled Away

We read the front page together as the train pulled away from Sheffield station. It was a place that epitomised the standard of stations in the UK. Of course it was dark and dirty but it was fundamentally and ultimately depressing, a simple and formulaic description but a fitting one nonetheless. It was constantly being tampered with, changing hands, modernising and bearing the brunt of the network’s ever decreasing performance. That was why there was always a feeling of quiet elation, a glowing in the stomach that you were heading away from the station. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Sheffield, it was on the verge of becoming a very exciting place. It’s just that the station is the worst possible welcome / departure point. (I could go on to describe its surroundings: towering, vicious blocks of flats, imposing their grimy presence on the city, but that would further add to the detrimental and perhaps false impression I am giving)
The headlines were depicting the horrors of the Jenin massacre. Not pleasant reading by any stretch, but certainly not when joined by the prying eyes of Jenny, a friend from way back, who had chosen not to purchase any reading material from the station shops, to accompany the long journey to London. Of course, there was nothing I could say or do to prevent or discourage her from reading my broadsheet without making the remainder of the journey a rather uncomfortable one, or should I say more uncomfortable one. I would have brought my walkman, of course, (Blood on the Tracks or Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s I See A Darkness would have been great to have on, especially as it had been a while since I had gotten round to giving them a listen), but, no, that would be considered rude and a tad insulting to the company I was presently keeping.
The other options available at this point were sleeping or chatting. Either option was fatal. It would take a lifetime to decide which was the worse path to take. I can never sleep either whilst travelling or generally in the day. It creates such a lethargic feeling deep within and my mouth feels as if it were laced with someone else’s saliva not to mention the numbing sensation it provides my limbs and head with. Yet chatting would have been equally as painful. Having spent the entire week with Jenny, not constantly but frequently, conversation was now at a low point. We had exhausted all possible small-talk options and an expression of our ever-differing views on any subject you care to mention, would have resulted in a tired and soul-draining squabble. So, although it was all I could do to stop myself from screwing the paper up and shoving it in Jenny’s pretty, Audrey Hepburn-like face, I continued to read the paper. But did she have to read so slowly?
Luckily, Jenny fell asleep as we approached Birmingham, leaving me to peruse the world news section. Jenny wasn’t interested in that bit anyway.