The Mumbling Man
Danie Ware
I like trains.
No, I don’t mean I stand at the end of the platform at Clapham with a fur-hooded anorak and a notebook, I mean intercity trains. I’ve got a b***h of a schedule and a lot of meetings and trains are quiet. They’re good places to think.
A long-distance train is a null-space; it’s timeless, it exists between one place and another. You don’t have to be anywhere, or anyone. No-one expects anything of you. You can sit with your earbuds, your laptop, your book; you can watch the passing countryside and leave your stresses behind.
Trains are peaceful, tinged with potential.
It was Friday evening, and I was heading back into London from Portsmouth, straight from a conference and laden with possibilities. As we’d left the coast, the carriage had been
