Train Tales

A double feature this week with a couple of observational bits written on a trip to Leeds and back, starring one of my favourite trains: the Trans-Pennine Express. Why is it a favourite? Well I get it a lot and I've got to assume whoever named the line is Kraftwerk fan. Plus the service is generally decent.

Trans-Pennine Express 02/09/12

The iPod cut out. What had once been the soothing sounds of Belle & Sebastian were transformed first to silence and then, more gradually, to the lilting vague conversation of the carriage which moves along in time with the rocking of the train and clank of the points.

He fumbled with the aging music box, desperately trying to return his distraction. But the electronics inside were as unresponsive to his wishes as the machine’s case suggested. What had once been gleaming pure blackness with a bright silver-white apple on its back had faded with the years and was now dull, chipped and scratched.

Against his wishes the sounds of the carriage filled his ears and then his mind. Two pockmarked teenage boys argued loudly over the benefits of orcs, whilst the Chinese girl sat next to them avoided the conversation through the intense study of an empty Burger King bag.

Behind her the fat belly of a man clad in neckbeard and taut My Little Pony T-shirt collided sporadically with the clear Perspex wall separating the seats from the doors. This slapping provided strange irregular percussion to the group of rugby fans who loudly and drunkenly carried the chants they had collected in the stands of Warrington and Saint Helens back with them across the hills.

One of the teenage boys desperately covered his mention of Thomas the Tank Engine by reference to an apocryphal nephew, the fat brony glared.

The iPod sputters back into life.

Trans-Pennine Express 03/09/12

Despite the people the train seems empty of life as it races through the dark and seemingly endless hills where in the gloom the distinction between track and tunnel becomes philosophical to all but the driver. What life there is in here moves so slow as to be almost indiscernible.

A couple are on their way to Huddersfield and then from to their homes in the hills above. Both she and he are worn down by years of weather and drink. She pulls out her phone and finds someone to give her a lift from the station; he feels an aching pain stir in a long broken heart.

Two men from the east of Europe munch on burgers and between bites of waking with the crack of dawn and the dreams they share of an imagined America, the hope that it proves better than the reality found in Britain. There words are whispered delicately as if in fear that should any other hear yet another fragile illusion will be smashed.

Only two others sit in this carriage. One taps and pecks absentmindedly at the screen a glossy red pad, I scribble and scrawl in a beaten black notebook.

The guard walks in then she yawns loudly and stretches against the door, paying no regard to tickets. In the blackness the Trans-Pennine Express rolls on.

What have I been up to lately?

As you may have noticed all I’ve been doing on this blog recently is posting stories, and I imagine most of you are very frustrated at not being able to read about my thrilling life or my opinions on politics, music, and so forth so I have decided to write something which should hoefully lay your mind to rest. Probably one of the main reasons I haven’t been posting all the other gubbins that I originally meant to when I started this thing is that I’ve been saving it for my podcast which if you don’t know is called Errand of Mercy, details on our facebook page. Once you’ve clicked on that link you should almost certainly “like” the page and probably subscribe to the show, and then force all your friends or loved one to “like” it too BY WHATEVER MEANS NECCESARY! I still do have opinions though so I’m hoping that now that I have a bit more time on my hands you’ll start seeing a few more of those from time to time.

“Why do you have more time Geraint?” you ask (I assume), well dear reader that is because one month ago I quit my job. There are a lot of reasons I left the job, and I’m not going into all of them here but essentially:

1)      I didn’t enjoy it.

2)      I felt exhausted all the time and didn’t have time to do anything with the money I was making.

3)      I realised I should probably do what I actually “want” to do rather than what I feel I “ought” to do.

Having free time has been great and has meant I’ve been able to do a lot of things I hadn’t been able to do in the months when I was working, not least of which is managing to get rather a lot of writing done and finally edit some of the things I’d finished quite a while before hand. Of course I’ve also managed to spend a lot of time watching TV, playing video games, and reading comics which while nice is probably a bit less productive and fulfilling us of all this time I have. I suppose the point I really want to reach is demostrated in the picture below where a group of men have done what they "ought" to (chopping down a tree) and have also managed to do what they "want" to (pose for a totally sweet photo), whether I manage to achieve it is a different matter but these lumberjacks fill me with hope.

Where do I go from here? I’m not sure to is the short answer, the slightly longer perhaps more medium length answer is that I’m hoping to do some travelling using the last few pennies I have stashed away and am currently making plans to go and bum round Europe for a. In the longer term provided I don’t win the lottery or get offered some amazing dream job I’m looking at going back to university and actually doing that PhD I probably should have been doing anyway. In the meantime you can continue to enjoy some of my stories and musings and what not which I imagine you’ll be getting on a much more regular basis from now on.

Ray Winstone

Having asked the intern for a cup of tea, milk one sugar, the actor Ray Winstone attempted to sink into the chair at the edge of the studio. However he was soon forced to sit bolt upright, the flimsy fold out chair did not make slouching comfortable and he was worried it would be unable to support his increasingly ample weight. They had just finished recording another advert for the betting firm BET365, in which Ray Winstone was pretending to be in another, different advert. He had convinced himself that this meant he was working three different jobs, including his current starring role in a gritty big screen re-make of the Sweeney, and that this entirely justified his constant exhaustion. By this point in his life Ray Winstone had wanted to retire and move to a cottage in the Cotswolds, perhaps doing occasional theatre work and taking time to write his memoirs. Downsizing had seemed like a good idea, especially now that his daughters, the actresses Lois and Jaime Winstone, had left home but his wife, the actress Elaine McCausland, didn’t want to move out of London because of her social life and had actually made him to move to a new bigger home. He was having trouble paying off the mortgage.

A booming laugh shook the set and Ray Winstone looked up to see the director joking with the Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone. Ray Winstone attempted to avoid looking at his own Giant Disembodied Head but it spun round and stared at him before beginning to float in his direction, the director in tow. Ray Winstone had originally enjoyed the company of the Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone, even considered him a friend of sorts, but he had grown to despise his own Giant Disembodied Head. In it he could see every imperfection in his own aging face blown up to several times their original size; every time the head spoke he heard the same idiosyncrasies that he hated in his voice as though they were being broadcast through a megaphone.

Ray Winstone had met his own head shortly after the release of the critical and commercial failure Beowulf, directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis. Zemeckis had told him that the film would be a huge success and that his innovative motion capture process would allow him to continue his film career long into the future despite his rapidly deteriorating physique. In fact it was these assurances that had allowed Ray Winstone to be brought around by his wife’s pleas for a new home. The fallout of Beowulf combined with his disastrous appearance in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull had left him embittered to the idea of computer graphics in cinema.

Soon after the failure of Beowulf Zemeckis had sent Ray Winstone a Fortnum and Mason’s hamper by way of an apology. Ray Winstone had thrown the hamper under a Northern Line tube train as it came up to the platform, an action which he found incredibly cathartic but which his wife, the actress Elaine McCausland, had called “petty” and “childish”.

It was because of his distrust of computer graphics that he had initially turned down the BET365 job, but a few days later he had found his own Giant Disembodied Head sleeping rough, hovering about 2 foot above an alley next to his local pub. Ray Winstone’s Giant Disembodied Head had explained to Ray Winstone how it had tried to make a living as a Ray Winstone impersonator and how its career had faltered due to the fact that in London there were a lot of people who sounded like Ray Winstone already and because it was a Giant Disembodied Head, which had unsettled the punters and made it difficult to find suitable performance spaces. Ray Winstone could empathise, having once been a struggling up and coming actor himself, and also felt some responsibility due to the fact that it was his own head. He had called BET365 back the next morning and arranged to get his head an audition.

Now the shoe was on the other foot (metaphorically of course, unlike Ray Winstone The Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone didn’t need shoes as it mostly travelled by hovering or just spontaneously appearing in rooms when it was needed). Ray Winstone had been the one in need of help. Ray Winstone’s Giant Disembodied Head knew that Ray Winstone was having money troubles so had set him up with a job supporting him in a few of the TV adverts. Ray Winstone hated having to rely on anyone, especially his own head.

“Me and the lads are going to the pub mate, fancy coming along for a pint” boomed The Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone.

“No thanks mate” said Ray Winstone “I need to get some sleep, me and my wife, the actress Elaine McCausland, are going to the Lake District tomorrow and I’ve got an early start.”

Unlike Ray Winstone the Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone did not need to sleep and rarely had to eat. Ray Winstone had sometimes wondered if The Giant Disembodied head had been absorbing energy from him but he soon became resigned to the fact that he was just getting older.

The Giant Disembodied Head of Ray Winstone appeared to disapprove of Ray Winstone’s answer and began to scowl. It then started to rotate violently around its axis, so fast that Ray Winstone was unable to make out any of his features and he appeared to be nothing more than a blur. The gust of air put off by this display blew scripts across the studio and knocked over some of the flimsier pieces of the set. The Head then bobbed and came to a rest with a beaming smile.

“You’re fucking whipped mate! Come on just one pint!”

Ray Winstone sighed and slumped into his chair. It gave way with a sudden crunch leaving Ray Winstone in a heap on the floor. Ray Winstone’s Giant Disembodied Head continued to levitate a few feet above him. It had no need for chairs.

I realise some of you might not have seen the advert in question, so here it is