Going home

Sunday trains are always a gamble. Sometimes they don’t run. The train from Bromley North to Waterloo East is an example. Despite having been sold a ticket for said transport, there are no trains on the line due to engineering works; which entails going from Bromley South to Victoria, to Green Park, to Oxford Circus to…yawn. This convoluted route means that, in my guise as aged parent – a title previously accorded to my own mother and father – I have to be accompanied by daughter number two in order that she can explain to various railway employees along the way why I shouldn’t have to purchase another six tickets. At my time of life, and up from the country, I’m not allowed to speak for myself.


What awaits me on a Sunday, at what Bridget refers to as ‘Big Waterloo’, is also an unknown quantity: will there be more challenges involving cancellations, deviations or buses? Or will it merely be a case of traversing most of the home and south counties, always ensuring I am in one of the front five carriages, as those at the rear are lost along the way? My travelling companions seem equally confused to be on their way to Dorchester North when all they wanted to do was to put their feet up on their settees in front of the TV in Guildford. A surprisingly large number of folk leave the train at Havant, apparently having ever given up hope of seeing civilisation again. Some sense of normality is finally regained once we attain landfall at Southampton, whereupon a young boy embarks with two budgerigars in a small cage.

You don’t see those very often these days I remark pleasantly.
Young boy, who has no comparable memory of old ladies covering Billy with a tea-towel for the night, a tea-towel with a pointy edge which cloaks an ancient cuttlefish, smiles wanly but politely.
What are their names? Young boy assumes more interest.
The blue one is Marcus and the yellow one is Holly.
I run out of continuing conversation and watch the budgies silently open and close their beaks like twins speaking a secret language.

I am seated near the toilets which have a circular sliding door that seals itself closed with frightening efficiency the minute a passenger enters. I’d like to use this facility but I’m terrified of becoming trapped inside. This is not an unjustified phobia for now comes the sound of frantic knocking from within. Somewhere towards Brockenhurst a man leaning against the window, drinking from what I surmise to be not an isolated tin of lager, becomes vaguely alerted.

I can’t get out comes a muffled voice.

The budgies have perked up and we watch with interest as Lager Man falls forward and presses every button he can locate without losing his balance.
I’m trapped comes the sound of the near hysterical entombed being.
Lager Man is now on a mission to remember the sequence of keys necessary to contact the aliens in Close Encounters. And finally, he releases the imprisoned victim.
Thank God says the prisoner. I thought I was in there until Weymouth.

Daughter number two has a new home, hence the visit. She and her fiancé - an old-fashioned word, but one to which I am drawn because it goes some way to explaining the up and coming events which are in danger of denying my family any other interest in world events - are keen to extol the virtues of living in a delightful bijou terraced house in the leafier part of Bromley. I am camping on a futon in the sitting room. I don’t know what distinguishes a futon from a settee but I have a cold and it’s warm and I look forward to the rustle of leaves which I have been told is the only potentially disturbing noise I can expect. The people next door arrive home, share an unpleasant argument with the rest of the street and resolve it by holding an impromptu party.

Around 3am, the neighbours decide that winter has kicked in and start chopping up firewood. We country folk know that this is what’s happening but tomorrow I will be told that the fiancé has suggested that the noise emanates from aged mother downstairs. What does he think I was doing? Whittling an ear trumpet from a branch of ancient willow? Daughter number two comes down and prepares for battle, suitably dressed in pyjamas skinned from a number of Friesian cattle. I am impressed, as are the neighbours. The noise subsides but just as I am drifting off to a germ infested slumber, the burglar alarm on the other side of the house commences an intolerable wailing which will continue until the dawn chorus has given up and migrated to Wapping.

Unlike the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay, with whom I have recently assumed some empathy, I have a handy supply of Kleenex and mange to insert six in each ear. By five in the morning, this has reduced the siren to an incessant drumming and in desperation, and with some fortitude, I manage to convince myself that I am in the south of France, surrounded by the incessant chatter of cicadas. It works for the four remaining minutes before the boiler fires up in anticipation of those demanding hot showers.

Back on the train we approach Bournemouth and a beautiful young woman on her way to the dangerous toilets – should I warn her? – stops to speak with our young ornithologist.
I’ve never seen anyone on a train with budgerigars
This elicits no response.
What are their names?
Well, the blue one is Marcus………