44. Sleepless Nights

Cricket: The Test Series started on Thursday.   Australia play England at the Gabba in Brisbane for five days with four more matches to follow over the next three months.   

With typical Aussie bloody mindedness and lack of consideration, they decided that play should start at midnight, UK time.   Consequently, for the last week I’ve been rescheduling my body clock to turn myself from a diurnal into a nocturnal being – a creature of the night.   

On Thursday I got up from my afternoon slumber at eight o’clock in the evening, had a light breakfast/supper and got everything ready for the marathon ahead.   I lasted until teatime there, which was half past four in the morning here. 

I remember that some years ago when I was working, I looked forward to one day being able to stay up all night watching the Ashes series from Australia with no need to be up at any particular time on the following day.   But I was younger then!  I had stamina.   Maybe tonight I will make it right through until the close of play.

It was very different not so long ago.   I remember in the middle of the night in the early morning of New Years Day, January 1995 watching on Ceefax the changing score from Adelaide.  I watched as Mike Gatting’s score went up digit-by-digit, putting together big partnerships with Gooch and Atherton.

Two years ago, when the Ashes series was played in England, I was in Cayman watching the cricket there on Cayman TV.  I paid an extra $25 a month on my subscription for the channel that promised to show “every ball of every game.”

Cayman in August is six hours behind British Summer Time and the start of play was at 11:00 a.m. in the UK.  I set my alarm for 4:45 in the morning.   “Why don’t you sleep in the other bedroom?” Caroline whinged.

The decisive and eagerly awaited fifth test match started on a Thursday and I saw every ball bowled over the first two days.   But on the Saturday morning at 8:59, just after Jimmy Anderson had bowled the third ball of his over, the TV screen went blank for a second or two.   When the picture was restored we were at the City of Manchester Stadium just moments before the kick off between Manchester City and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Not a word of explanation; no voiceover; no elucidation and certainly no apology.  Bloody football in August!

I was straight on the phone to Weststar TV, my cable supplier.   All the lines to customer services were busy and a robot informed me that I was eighth in the queue to be answered.

“Hi Mr Terry.  This is Cindy.  I recognise your voice.”   

Cindy and I were old friends and after a twenty-minute wait on hold, we were renewing our acquaintanceship.   She is an American from Alabama, married to a Caymanian businessman and is employed to placate stroppy customers like me.  She seemed now to be an old friend.   We go back three years.

The first time that we ‘met’ was when I phoned to make the observation that on BBC America that evening, the entire time from 7:00 p.m. until half past one the following morning, was taken up with showings of Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen” programmes, one after the other.   “I do not pay an additional subscription for that kind of rubbish,” I told her.

“He’s very popular in the UK,” she assured me.  “The English here on island like him.”

“Do they really?” I asked incredulously.  “I think that you and your bosses should know that my scientific survey has come up with the result that 100% of the English people in this house, don’t like him.” 

“And anyway,” I continued, “The language is so heavily censored that all you ever hear is a succession of bleeps.”

“Yes, he does seem to swear a lot,” agreed Cindy.

“On top of all that,” I said, putting on my best English upper crust accent and trying to sound like Prince Charles attempting to be posh, “He’s a poor chef.  Have you eaten at Claridges recently?”

“Yes, last Easter,” Cindy said “and we both rather enjoyed it.”

Cindy had calmed and soothed me in the past when I had phoned in to complain that the England v Italy rugby match was not, despite trails that it would be, shown live.  At other times she had tried to explain why neither Wimbledon nor the Ryder Cup was not of sufficient interest to be shown on Cayman television.

“I’ll look into it.   I’ll just put you on hold,” she said after I had told her that the cricket had just disappeared without warning or justification.   After a few minutes she was back.

“I’ve got some good news for you,” she said, minutes later.  “There’s another cricket game coming on at eleven o’clock.”

“It’s the same match,” I said, grumpily.

“No, it’s a different game,” she said, “and it starts at eleven.”

“No, it’s the same game,” I said, wearily, dreading where this conversation was likely to go. 

“No,” Cindy said patiently, “The game that you were watching that finished at nine, started at five o’clock and the next game starts at eleven.”

“It started on Thursday.”

Cindy’s laugh was genuine and infectious.  It quite cheered me up.

“Oh Mr Terry, you’re so funny.  And I suppose that it finishes tomorrow?”

“Well it could do but it’s more likely to end on Monday,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be silly.  Look, I’ve got a lot of calls waiting.  Anything else I can help you with?”

At eleven o’clock, as Cindy had promised, the cricket was back.   Jimmy Anderson bowled the fourth ball of the over he had started two hours ago.   There was no justification or explanation from Weststar.   Anyone switching on then would have assumed that this was live cricket.   I resisted the temptation to go to the BBC website to see the current state of play but instead I sat back and imagined that I was on a far distant planet, where radio signals take two hours to travel from the Earth and watched the rest of the day’s play ‘as live’.

As they promised they would, Weststar had shown, “ every ball of every game.”

Manchester City 1 (Adebayor 18’)  – Wolverhampton Wanderers 0, in case you’re interested and I bet you’re not. Hardly anyone ever was. 

43. Dialogue and Interrogation

On Tuesday, Caroline had an interview.  Actually, it was more of a meeting than an interview but at the end of it she has at last (and about time too), got a job. Caroline has had quite a few interviews during her career and she has never been unsuccessful.  I, on the other hand, had several during my working life and was only successful at three.

I was an appalling interviewee. I have absolutely no idea why. The last one was nearly twenty years ago when feedback afterwards was never given and so I never found out. I have some ideas though.

The first interview I ever had was when I was seventeen. It wasn’t for a job but for a scholarship. The Birds Eye frozen foods factory was one of the largest employers in Lowestoft when I was at school. Every year they granted an award of £120. This went to a male student in his final year in the sixth form at Lowestoft Grammar School. Very 1960s that wasn’t it? No girls were expected to follow a career in industry. That person would be looked on favourably if he were ever to pursue a career after university with Unilever, the parent company.

I applied but all I wanted was the cash. I didn’t want to work in a factory and I’m afraid that this became all too clear at the interview. The only question I can remember being asked was, “On a wet Friday afternoon would you rather be in a classroom studying history, or out on the sports field playing rugby?”

What an absolutely stupid question - and I told him that it was too. That was my first failed interview.

I acquired my first ever teaching position without having an interview. In the summer of 1969 after completing a teaching qualification course at the Institute of Education in London, I was working on Quality Control at Birds Eye. I had no intention of ever becoming a teacher.

I had applied for a place on the teaching course in order to have a year in London at the taxpayers’ expense – no student loans in those days!  The plan after that was: work at Birds Eye throughout June, July, August and September; pay off my £125 overdraft; save as much money as I could; go to New Zealand for the winter and play cricket; come back to the UK in the spring of 1970 and then think about getting a job.

But my plans were thwarted. The sequence of produce to be harvested and then frozen at Birds Eye during the summer was:

1 - Peas (June/July).

2 - Runner Beans (July/August).

3 - Strawberries (August/September).

At the beginning of September, tragedy struck.  The strawberry harvest failed and I was laid off.  There I was on Thursday September 4th with no job and no prospects.

“You could teach,” my dad said, clearly alarmed at the prospect of having to support his unemployed son. “Go down to the Education Office. They’re always desperate for qualified teachers.”

So that’s what I did. “Be at Roman Hill Secondary Modern School on Monday morning,” I was told.

Just think! If late summer 1969 had been a little warmer or maybe cooler, wetter or drier, windier or calmer, my whole life would have turned out differently.

Eighteen months later, I applied for a job at Creighton School in Muswell Hill, North London.  Also there for interview was a young Scottish woman.  We sat together in a small room chatting awkwardly, waiting to be called and I suddenly realised that she had absolutely no idea where she was.  She knew that she was in London but when she told me that if she got the job, she intended to rent a room from her sister in Reigate, which is a town nearly 30 miles and more than two hours away and on the other side of London, I knew that for a potential geography teacher, geography was not her strong point.

I had one tricky moment during my interview.

“Tell us about the pastoral system you have at your present school,” I was asked.

“Just because we’re in Suffolk doesn’t mean we all keep sheep!” I retorted indignantly but the Scottish girl must have been even more stupid than me.

Three years after that, married and with a baby daughter, I had an interview for the Head of Department job at a school in Harlesden. There was a shortlist of six and after a tour of the school, the interviews were held in the education offices of the borough council.  Of course, being a ‘W’, I was the last to be seen.  

The six of us sat in a small, bare office and left one by one to be interviewed by a panel made up of governors, education officers and senior teachers, in a large room at the end of the corridor next to the toilet.

After the second person had been interviewed and returned to the room, someone said that they’d both been gone for exactly 5 minutes and thirty seconds. When the third person also returned in five and a half minutes, we all sniggered a little. Eventually it was my turn.

I sat through and responded to some mind boggling, unimaginative, dull questions. I noticed that one of the seven interviewers had not only failed to acknowledge me when I introduced myself but that he spent the entire time with his back to me, gazing out of the window watching the traffic and pedestrians outside.  When I stood up to leave, thinking that I had acquitted myself very well, he continued to ignore me, staring out of the window.

Once in the corridor, I looked at my watch. 5 minutes 20 seconds. That was amazing. I would be gone for exactly five and a half minutes too.  Then I had a brainwave. In those days it was the custom for the candidates to wait while the panel discussed things and came to a decision.  Sometimes you could sit and wait for an hour or more waiting for a resolution.  My ruse wouldn’t improve my chances of getting the job but it would give the competition something to think about. I went to the toilet.

I sat in a cubicle looking at the second hand of my watch moving slowly around the face. After five minutes I was bored and decided that I had delayed things long enough to earn some respect.

As I turned the handle of the waiting room door I couldn’t help grinning. Eleven minutes since I’d left. Tee hee! But the room was empty!

I was confused. It was now about six fifteen on a dark November evening and as I walked out, I could see that the offices I passed were empty but then, through the big window of one of them, I saw a face I recognised from the interviewing panel.

“Oh, there you are,” he said as I walked in. “We thought that you’d gone home.”

“So, I didn’t get the job then?” I said.

“No, but it was close,” he lied. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Wasn’t easy?” I asked incredulously. “You came to a decision in less than five minutes. It must have been the easiest decision you’ve ever had to make – or a complete stitch up,” I added darkly.

“Now, now,” he said. Things are always fair and above board here.”

“Come off it,” I said. “It takes about five minutes to say the internal candidate’s name and I suppose that she got the job?”

“Mrs Azikiwie Gbadamosi-Olanrewaju was appointed, yes. But I assure you that no decision had been made in advance. We are very strong on equal opportunities here in Brent.”

“Yes, obviously,” I muttered.

For the next few years, I didn’t apply for any promotions. I was never ambitious. Then one day I was asked to see the Headteacher in her office.

“Oh God! What have you done now?” one of my colleagues asked.

“Nothing that I can think of,” I said but that was hardly reassuring. The last time I had been summoned to see the Head, I could tell as soon as I walked in that she was furious.

On that occasion, “I will not have racists on my staff,” were her first words.

“Good,” I responded, thinking that was the right thing to say.

“I’ve received a report from a parent that yesterday you made a racist comment to his daughter in the new first year class.”

“Did I? I don’t think so.”

“You referred to her racial origin.”

“Oh no,” I thought, “She could be right.” It was early September and I’d spent all summer playing cricket with and against loads of Australians. I call Australians, ‘Aussies’. Did I call a Pakistani girl a ‘Paki’?

“What did I say?” I asked with some trepidation.

“You called her a Jew.”

Suddenly I felt relieved and a lot happier. “I certainly did not,” I said emphatically. “I wouldn’t know if a kid is Jewish. I can’t recognise Jews and even if I did, I would never refer to it.”

“She says that you did. Her friends say you did, and her parents are making a complaint.”

I felt dreadful again. How can you prove that you didn’t say anything? And there were witnesses too. I seemed to be in big trouble.

“What shall I do?” I asked.

“Well, you could start by apologising and see what happens then. The girl’s outside.  Would you like to speak to her?”

Into the office came an eleven-year-old girl who sat down and gave me the sort of look of utter contempt that only Muswell Hill kids can produce.

“What did I say?” I asked her.

“You called me a Jew,” she said.

“No, I didn’t. Are you sure that you’ve got the right teacher? I don’t recognise you.  What did I say?”

“In geography yesterday you said, “Turn round Jew.”

Suddenly it made sense. “Yesterday was the first lesson you’ve had with me, wasn’t it?  And as we’d never met before, I didn’t know any names.  You misheard me. What I said was, “Turn round you.”

This time though, I wasn’t in trouble. I had been called in to be offered a job. I became Head of Careers at Creighton School by default. The post holder had resigned and nobody had applied for the vacancy. In desperation (as she told me later) the Head asked me if I’d take it on. I wasn’t at all interested but as it would mean an extra £2500 a year on my salary, I said yes.

When Creighton School closed a year later, amalgamating with another school to re-form as Fortismere, we all had to apply for our old jobs but neither I nor the Head of Careers at the other school, who was leaving the area, applied for that Careers position.

Four external candidates were interviewed and as I knew the layout of the school and the department, I was asked to show them around during the afternoon before the interview in the evening.

The next day I found that I was not very popular with the newly appointed Headteacher.

“What did you say?” he spluttered.

He told me that the interview panel hadn’t met as all four of the candidates had withdrawn within half an hour of the end of my tour. They had asked me a lot of questions and I must have been too honest in response I suppose.

There was one job that I expected to get but didn’t. In the first year of Fortismere School’s existence there were 190 teachers but only enough teaching for 155 of us. We all had a lot of non-contact time and I was sent on a one-day-a-week course on Pre Vocational Education at Roehampton College, twelve miles away in West London.  Every Monday morning for nine months, I would leave the house at 6:30 in the morning and crawl slowly around the packed and crowded North Circular Road.  I would get home at about seven o’clock in the evening.

It was tough and an intense course but I stuck it out because, as the Head had told me when he persuaded me to follow it, “You’ll be the school’s expert on the subject when you complete it.”

Consequently, I was a little surprised and more than a little pissed off to see a paragraph in the Staff Newsletter in May informing us all that someone else had been appointed to the post of Head of CPVE.

“Isn’t that the job you promised me?” I asked the Head. “Shouldn’t you at least have advertised it?”

He wasn’t even slightly embarrassed.

I was once offered a position after being successful at interview but declined it. I was interviewed for a senior position at a neighbouring school. After my interview - I was the fourth of four shortlisted - I sat and chatted with the other candidates while we waited for the decision. After about half an hour, I was called back in and offered the job.  I turned it down.

During the wait, I had found out that one of my competitors was applying for her own job. She had resigned two months earlier, intending to go with her partner to North Wales where he was relocating for a new position.  Then he had dumped her and as she no longer had any reason or desire to leave London, she had tried to withdraw her resignation. The Head, however, told her that she was too late and she would have to apply along with anyone else who was interested.

As soon as I informed the panel of my decision the Headteacher went into a mini tantrum and accused me of wasting everyone’s time.  I was immediately certain that I had done the right thing, as I would never have got on with her.

I was appointed to the very last post that I ever held at Fortismere after an interview but in reality, it was virtually by default.

The post of Co-Ordinator of Examinations and Assessments came up and the day before the deadline for the receipt of applications, I was told by a very senior member of staff that there was only one applicant and that I should, “Please, for God’s sake, apply for it. We can’t have him.”

I did apply, mumbled my way through the interview and that became my job for the last fifteen years that I worked.

Interviews are a load of bollocks anyway.  I was on the interviewing panel for jobs at Fortismere a couple of times. During one interview, assessing only internal candidates, we had to keep score surreptitiously on the responses.

After the last candidate had been seen we sat in an embarrassed, awkward silence. At the end of the procedure one candidate stood out way ahead of the others according to all our score sheets. “We can’t appoint her,” someone said. “Could you work with her, Terry?”

“No,” I said. 

The post was as my assistant and the person who had starred at the interview was a deeply unpleasant and universally unpopular woman both with the staff and the students. Some people excel at interviews and in the teaching profession at least, they use that ability to make rapid career advances and continue to do so until they reach their level of total incompetence.  Unfortunately, by the time they get to that level, some of them - but not all and Caroline is an obvious exception - have caused and continue to cause, huge damage.

Knowing that I will never experience that rejection dejection ever again, is deeply satisfying.

42. Predicted Surgery

Texting is not something that I do very much.  To the best of my knowledge I have never instigated a text discourse.  I wouldn’t know how to.  I have taken part in textual intercourse once or twice but only to respond to someone who has contacted me by text first.  “What’s Stella’s phone number?” I was asked recently and I replied, “020 XXXX XXXX” thinking while I did so that it was rude of the person who had asked for this information not to phone me and ask for it.  Couldn’t she face the prospect of talking to me, I wondered?

Predictive text is something that blows my mind.  Sometimes when I have nothing else to do, I start a note on my phone keypad by bashing away at the keyboard without really looking at it to find that I have come up with perhaps, “tydu fofnd cjdh chhxso” which predictably transforms into “G’DAY TRAY FOUND CHISEL”.

Then, I write a posting using those words, plus a bit of padding, in the order that they appear.  So, it might begin, “G’day Bruce, I was looking in the tray you lent me and I think that I’ve found the chisel that you told me you lost.”

Three of the 44 postings I have made since January are actually written by my iPhone and only the punctuation and padding is mine.  

Sometimes predictive text can cause problems.  I was pushing a trolley around Sainsbury’s on Tuesday and I had got everything on my list except one thing: STORAGE.  I had no idea what that meant.  I couldn’t remember writing it and assumed that Caroline, knowing that I was going shopping, had added it to the list on my phone.  I thought that it was a bit vague of her but nonetheless I bought three storage jars.

Four hours later as I began to prepare the dumplings to have with our stew, I realised what had happened.  My phone had not recognised ‘ATORA’, which is a brand of suet and had altered it to ‘STORAGE’.

********

I have had five surgical operations in my life - four under general anaesthetic and one with a local.

The first was thirty-five years ago when I had an abscess removed from my upper jaw.  It was causing me no pain at all and I would not have known that it was there if it hadn’t shown up on X-rays.  I agreed to the operation because in those days one never argued with doctors or dentists.  

In the 70s, Barnet Hospital was not the multi-million-pound showpiece that it is today.  It consisted of one, fifty-year-old central building and about twenty satellite prefabricated buildings that housed the various departments.  The ward that I was admitted to was one of these prefabs.

The procedure was to take place under general anaesthetic and within an hour of admission I was lying on a bed feeling a little drowsy, very apprehensive and nervous.  A nurse gave me an injection in my bum and soon afterwards I fell asleep.  I was woken by the spatter of freezing cold rain on my face.  

I was lying on a trolley being pushed through driving rain along a roadway towards the operating theatre.  I looked up to see who was pushing me and saw two hospital porters. They were both holding an umbrella to keep themselves dry (not me) and one was smoking a cigarette.  We got to the theatre where I remember being told to count down from a hundred and that was it.  

At six o’clock that evening I felt good and told the nurse that I was going home.  She said that I had to stay in overnight.  It was a Wednesday and my favourite TV programme was on at eight o’clock and I was not going to miss it and so I discharged myself.  Several nurses treated me as if I were a convict making an escape but I got out and away.

A few years after that I had an operation, again under general anaesthetic, to straighten the septum in my nose.  The septum is the cartilage wall separating the nostrils of the nose and is, I was told at the time, the last part of your body to stop growing.  This means that it has nowhere to go as it keeps growing and so it may bend and close off a nostril.  My left nostril was permanently blocked.  

Is the septum really the last part to stop growing?  Surely the ears are.  My ears are a lot longer now than they were when I was thirty and if I’d had ears like this when I was eighteen when the rest of me stopped growing, I’d have looked even more freakish than I did at the time.

Caroline made an interesting discovery the other day.  “Your left big toe is getting shorter,” she cried out with some delight.

She’s right.  My left big toe is half a centimetre shorter than the right one and it never used to be.  What’s going on here?  Is there anything else getting smaller?  What next?

Twenty-five years ago, I had a vasectomy under a local anaesthetic.  This was done at a clinic in Soho, central London and my appointment was for nine in the morning.  When I had arrived and registered, I found the part of the clinic where the procedure was to take place.  

I discovered that I was in a group of about twenty men all of whom had nine o’clock appointments too.  We sat on chairs along the wall of a corridor in alphabetical order. Guess who was last?

Every five minutes or so the next one went in and we all moved down a chair getting nearer and nearer to the door.  After the event, the patient appeared in the corridor through a door ten yards from the one he had gone in through.  Virtually every one of them thought that it was really funny to stand facing those of us still waiting and to writhe in agony with their hands grasping their crotch, before walking off grinning.

At last it was my turn.  I had heard stories about how long it took and I decided to time it.

“OK,” said the surgeon, giving me a friendly and encouraging smile.  Last one this morning.  You’ll feel a sharp prick and a little bit of pain and it will be all over before you know it.”

“That will make a nice change from feeling a total prick,” I said, looking at my watch and trying to inject a bit of levity and humour into the proceedings.

“OOOWW!”

“Do you follow football?” asked the nurse who was standing by my side.

“Yes,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

“Who do you support?” she said.

“Norwich.”

“How are they doing this season?”

“OK.”

“Do you see them play very often?”

Look,” I snapped.  “I know why you’re asking me these stupid questions and I suppose it’s nice of you but I’m in a bit of pain and I really don’t want to talk at the moment. So, will you please shut up?”

The surgeon raised his head from between my legs, holding a scalpel that looked as if it had been dipped in red paint.

“There’s no need to be rude to the nurse, Mr Wilson,” he said sternly, waving his scalpel at me.  He wasn’t smiling now.  

“She’s just doing her job and she doesn’t need people like you with that kind of attitude.  So, if you can’t be pleasant, be quiet.”

“OK I will,” I said sheepishly.  “And it’s Wilton.”

He got back to work.  Four minutes 23 seconds.

I was lying on the table before I had my liver transplant when I met the anaesthetist who came over and introduced himself to me.

“How long will this last?” I asked him.

“Why?”

“I’m just curious.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to you,” he said.  If you wake up, the time doesn’t matter and if you don’t wake up, you’re dead.”  

Ten hours!

On April 6^th 2009, six months to the day after my liver transplant, I had a total hip replacement operation at the same hospital – Broward General in Fort Lauderdale, Miami.  As I was coming around in the recovery suite after the operation, I was in a little bit of pain, only semi-conscious and feeling very sorry for myself.  In came Dr Selvaggi, my liver surgeon, who was in charge of my medical care. 

We chatted for a short time and then he asked if he could have a look at my hip.  He lifted the sheet, stared at the hip area for a time and then said, 

“Good job.  What a nice clean cut.  Great amputation.”  

Then he left.  Caroline arrived to see him coming out of the room, absolutely pissing himself. 

“Got him!” he laughed and walked off grinning from ear to ear.  She had no idea what he meant until she came in to find me a little tearful and very upset.

I’ve got at least two more operations to look forward to.  My left knee joint is going to need replacing in a year or two and the bones in my left ankle are deteriorating rapidly.  The ‘avascular necrosis’, affecting my knee and ankle (the symptoms are identical to arthritis but the original cause is different) is the result of the side effects of the massive steroid doses I was given after my transplant.  I am certainly not complaining, however, as it’s a very small price to pay for all these bonus years.

41. Brief Encounter

I had an encounter at a railway station the other day.  It was brief.

We don’t have an underground station in Winchmore Hill but we do have a rail link to Moorgate in the City of London.  The service is fast with the journey to Moorgate only taking 28 minutes.  Winchmore Hill railway station was built in 1871 and hasn’t altered very much since.  During the early morning we have trains scheduled at 13, 33 and 53 minutes past every hour.

Caroline catches a train from here to go to work on most days but I rarely use it.  I don’t go into central London very often and only do so when I really must.  One morning, I had to go into London and so Caroline and I went together.  

When we arrived at 7:05, the platform was, according to Caroline, more crowded than usual.  A number of people stood, strung out at intervals along most of the length of it.

A notice board suddenly became illuminated and informed us that the 6:53 was expected at 7:09.  Trains were running late.  From the 70 or more people standing there, shivering in the cold morning air, solitary and private, there was an audible hum of expectation that just managed to break the prevailing silence.  

There was no mention of the 7:13, which was the train that we were expecting to catch but that wasn’t an issue as we would be able to get on the 6:53 in just four minutes time.

As we all stood there staring expectantly up the line, the board lit up again and this time told us that the 7:13 was also delayed and was anticipated at 7:20.  All the time, more and more people were coming down the steps from the ticket office at the rate of around twenty every minute.  Now, we were informed that the 6:53 would be with us at 7:18.

“The 6:53 is going faster than the 7:13,” I told Caroline.  “It’s catching it up.  It’s only nine minutes behind it.”  

The platform was getting very crowded and Caroline began playing a game on her phone to pass the time.  We stood in silence for several minutes and I thought how different it would be if something similar could ever happen in Cayman. 

It couldn’t of course because commuters there all travel by car, cycle on the wrong side of the road or walk, as there are no trains.  I would have certainly made two or three new close friends and would probably be turning down dinner invitations too, by now.

The silence was broken by someone clumping noisily down the metal staircase.  Down the steps came a middle-aged woman with an expression of intense fury on her face.  “This is outrageous!” she announced to no one in particular.  “Outrageous!  There are no complaint forms!  How can I complain without a form?  I’ll write to the Regulator – or The Guardian!”  

The outraged lady stopped and stood next to me.  “There’s someone meeting me at Finsbury Park,” she said after a minute or two, looking at me directly.

“Oh,” I said, smiling a little nervously.  Caroline took a couple of paces backwards, as she always does when a nutter befriends me and that happens a lot.  What is it about me that makes misfits and angry people think that I am sympathetic to their weird thoughts and ideas?  I looked away from her, hoping that she would move on.

People had stopped coming down the steps as the platform was very crowded now and the gate at the top must have been closed.  Another message appeared on the board.  The next train would be at 7:35 and another at 7:38.

“Yes, but which is which?” demanded the angry lady of everyone within 20 feet of her.  Some people sniggered.  I thought that it was funny too but as she was directing her anger straight at me, I kept a straight face and just shrugged.

“It doesn’t really matter does it?” I asked her quietly.  “Just get on the first one.”  

“Doesn’t matter?  Doesn’t matter!  Oh, but it does matter, young man.  I’m being met at Finsbury Park, you know.”

“I’m sure he’ll wait for both trains,” I said.

“She,” she snapped.  “She’s expecting me on the 6:53. What happens if the 7:13 gets there first?”

“It can’t,” I said, trying to explain gently.  “It’s not like a motorway.  Trains can’t overtake one another.  You’ll be all right.”

In the distance a train appeared.  We all stood and watched it getting larger and larger for over a minute as it approached.  A railway employee walked by.

“What train’s this?” my new friend enquired, impatiently.

He looked up at the station clock.

“This will be the 7:33,” he said.  “It’s a little late.”

“SEE?” she shouted at me.  “SEE?  I’ve missed my train.  My day’s ruined!”

I said nothing but I turned and walked down the platform to get away from her, as the prospect of having her ranting at me, trapped in the same carriage for twenty minutes, was too awful to risk.  Caroline followed, giggling.  We got on but I don’t know if the woman did.  I assume she didn’t. 

All the seats were taken and we had to stand.  

“She called me ‘young man’,” I said.

“Ha, so she’s blind as well as bonkers,” Caroline sighed.