I felt a little unsteady on my pins standing at Glasgow Central train station waiting around for a train south. It was a heavy old night, heavy old day for that matter, yesterday and its never nice being rung in your hotel room to be told to check out. You’d sell an internal organ for ten more minutes under the duvet.
It would have been a nice feeling to be headed home but one has to work and so it was a trip to Derby, via York. The two O’clock London service was the best bet, and this was quiet and pleasant until it reached Edinburgh and the entire city climbed aboard, trying to find a seat. I know I seem to be constantly surprised by trains being busy, but they do seem to be running at full capacity these days, very much like India, and it’s becoming a more uncomfortable way to travel. Being a weekday I couldn’t splash out on up upgrade to First either, so unable to play out the weekend fantasies of being an executive.
Anyway, the journey south of Edinburgh to Newcastle is one of the most attractive in the country, skirting the dramatic coast, and there are worse ways to spend a Monday afternoon. There was a very middle class family sat next to me, the sort of family where the children call their parents ‘Mark’ and ‘Jane’ (if their parents names are Mark and Jane – calling them that otherwise would be mental) and during the course of the journey the Mum, or Jane, would point out landmarks to the children saying, every time, “remember when we went there with Granny?�. They’d been to an awful lot of places with Granny as it turned out, indeed there seemed to be very few places along the North East coast they’d not been with their fortunate grandparent. It was interesting how their Granny was called ‘Granny’ and not by her Christian name. I think the inappropriate use of first names extended only to the parents, whilst elder members of the family were still called by the appropriate moniker.
After Newcastle, some room and spare seats became available but I noticed a lot of passengers, younger ones, still chose to sit with their bags in the vestibule areas by the doors in the corridor. Even on quiet trains you’ll get students (and squaddies, army lads always choose the floor by the doors to sit and drink beer) using this space instead of sitting on a seat. Sometimes this has annoyed me but you know if you questioned them they’d say “This is how we travelled by train when I went travelling in Vietnam.�
Sit on the bloody roof then.
Anyway, after an age we were in York and I caught another service to Derby which was re-routed because, according to the announcement “There are quite a lot of people off sick at a signal box on the normal line, so we’re going to have to go via Doncaster. Sorry for this unusual occurrence.� I’m going to shut up about British railways now but it is like someone is playing with an enormous train set.
Got to Derby and checked into the Stewart Hotel on London Road before walking to the gig. I’ve absolutely never been more tired and worn out before a show and drank a can of energy drink called ‘Shark’ in the interval before I went on but I still felt almost too knackered to stand. I didn’t even feel any adrenalin before going on but in the end it was okay, very friendly and receptive audience and it was a good laugh. But then, coming off, I felt just as tired again. It’s as if your body can raise itself for half an hour, using up the last bits of energy, before beginning to shut down again.
I sat and had a pint but knew I needed some rest and so went for a very unshowbiz early night and lay in bed for a moment thinking how it’s odd that this morning I was in Glasgow recovering from a wedding, and now I was in Derby having done a show, and why there wasn’t a thicker duvet on the bed because it was freezing, and why I moan so much, and then fell unconscious.
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