Two Old Men on the Bus

I ran to catch the bus with a suitcase, scraping it on the automatic doors as they swung shut on me. The bus driver looked non-plussed.

An old man is sat by the window in the priority seat, looking out. Heavy-set in a khaki utility jacket, with a fake Royal Air Force patch sewn on to the arm. Headphones in, thick optical glasses, hairy jowls and a drooping face, like a walrus.

The bus pulls in.

A new old man boards the bus. He looks like a thumb, the end of a starfish. Wide smile and making conversation with the driver, unsuccessfully. He sits by the walrus, who takes no notice of him. This new old man’s face is round and soft from all the dopey warmth he emits. He wears a flat-cap, which he doffs and places on his lap.

‘Is warm today.’

‘What?’ The jowly old man pulls out his earphones and glances at his neighbour.

‘It’s warm today.’ Gives him a big grin.

‘It’ll rain later on.’

‘The sun is shining.’

‘No, it’s cloudy.’

‘I can see the sun, shining, will get hot!’

‘No, it’s cold. It’ll rain later on.’

‘I can see the sun – ha ha.’

‘The sun’s over there trying to come out from behind them clouds.’

‘It is bright – ha ha… I’m joking. Is a joke.’ The walrus grunts and turns away, annoyed. ‘You have to laugh: life.’

Spending time on tube trains

Lately, have had to ride more tubes than usual. Mainly to one place, The Embassy of Japan in the United Kingdom (to give them their full title) to renew my passport. They're very nice in there, the doorman greets you in Japanese, even though he is not, as far as I can perceive, Japanese himself and he makes this gracious effort as I walk through the security gate to say “ohayo-gozaimasu” and “sumimasen” super professionally. Today, I had forgotten that my rucksack placed through the bag scanner contained a Moomin swiss army knife, which he really considerately removed and sealed in a plastic bag, then gave me a tag for it. Idiot bringing a weapon into an embassy.

The embassy is at Green Park station and I get there by jumping on to the Jubilee Line from the Overground. I ping back and forth over this route a few times in the space of a week, getting to and from the embassy. The first train I get on is the Overground and at the station I see two loose perfectly good tomatoes on the way in, and hairy legs carrying a bike up the station stairs. The change over to the Jubilee line is rammed but I follow a pair of pink sling-back kitten heels with red patent leather points, and I follow them click clacking all the way down the escalator steps. ‘Excuse me, where did you get those shoes?’ ‘These are really old, Top Shop.’ ‘Oh. I really love them.’ ‘Thank you.’

I went to see The Farewell at a cinema in Angel and on the way home I took the Northern Line back down southwards. You really notice the colour palette of Londoners on a Northern Line carriage, because it cuts across the N/S divide. You get all sorts - people meshing in the middle of their journeys into central, or on their way home, or out clubbing in Clapham. Green of moss, slabs of concrete at dawn, freshly cut hay. Dark but not sleek, light but not vibrant. Coats on jackets and bags slung across shoulders, like postmen.

A sleepy man next to the mossy quilted jacket drinking a red bull, stored his half-drunk can in his bag. He nods off... as it drips out steadily... through the corner of his pleather bag on to the seat leaving a brown stain, maybe it was a coke, I don’t know.

Childhood memories of transport links

I have always lived near transport links. My earliest memory is of the kalang kalang of a railway barrier, slowly but surely reclining its black and yellow arms to come down across the road so that the people on bicycles and feet would stop. Trains tore passed – kalang kalang whoosh judder kalang ROAR.

I think I thought, in my tiny confused state that we were on the move. Or about to move. I mean to be fair, we did move quite a lot. 13 times in my lifetime so far, and I think I stopped counting at 16.

But as a baby on my bed I could hear the trains on the tracks. That faraway kalang kalang was like birdsong to me but more regular and constant, like a woodpecker maybe. I liked hearing it in the distance burgeoning as I got closer (this is when I had grown older and larger) taking it as given that I could walk to the shops alone, head thrust skyward.

Strolling.

Stations I feel comfortable in are in the middle of nowhere. Like that two-storey flat we lived in overlooking a dank railway bridge made of muddy coloured brick with all the vines and weeds sprouting from the top of it. Placed between deep countryside and a Green Belt that station was a lone platform. Tickets £2 in to town, return.

In the autumnal red and golden brown, I’d cross the bridge with keys jangling in frost-bitten hands to fumble with the lock. Sunset. Bedroom under heaped-on covers I could feel the tremors from the cargo trains as they passed under through the dead of night. I liked vampires back then so maybe there were bats under there or a gothic station master waiting for the red signal that never came.

Screeching.

Imagination never stopped with train stations and all that waiting. The trains went past with regularity and that gave me hope because I knew people were travelling places and I could sit still and be there to listen. Is that strange? I never felt tempted to board one or to escape because that noise of transience made me feel at home.

Amazing stillness, forethought and possibility at stations when everyone else is moving rushing on ahead. I think I’ll wait for the next train. There’ll probably be another one.

Soon.