Mediocre Mumblings

The Conveyer Belt

2007-02-06T05:30:00.000-08:00

I never noticed it before but sitting on a train is a little like being stuck on a conveyer belt. The train chundles past the scenery without caring to slow down for you to see it clearly. One big green and grey blur; cities, fields, trees. They all merge together like the painting of a two year old spoiled by a misplaced glass of water.

A young woman opposite reading the same page of the newspaper for over an hour looks up and makes some brief eye-contact with tired brown eyes. She broaches a smile, and I note the faint shade of sympathy in her features. I must look how I feel.

The old lady next to me begins to offer her pearls of wisdom on the annoyance of trains and other topics with little meaning. It's as English as watching television programmes you despise just to shout at the screen and then ring up ‘Points of View’ to complain. Typical English conversations with strangers are like small polite pieces of nothing wrapped in indifference. We make up for our insecure feelings of discomfort with the random ramblings of inanity.

My fag-stained fingers drum the Formica table and I wonder when I should get off the train. She chatters about her son; like the lonely do. They have no one and yet this demanding, dissident feeling of needing to speak. You can’t disappoint someone who doesn’t know you; it doesn’t matter if they judge you. People listen with morbid curiosity whilst you exhale with catharsis. Intimacy is much easier with a stranger, it's fearless and meaningless.

“What’s your name love?” asked the old lady in kind Yorkshire vernacular.

“Lucy”

“Lovely!” she leaned a little closer and patted my arm, “If I’d had daughter I was gonna name ‘er Lucy.” She smiled at her memories “Wouldn’t change my Jim for the world duck. But I think a daughter would’ve been nice.”

“Did you ever try for another child? For a daughter?”

“No, Percy, me husband died a few years after Jim was born.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault, love, not your fault.” She sighed and clutched her tan leather handbag with tenacity. “Those cancer sticks that did ‘im in. But, aye, you couldn’t get ‘im to give ‘em up. Ooooohhh no, he never would.”

“Men can be so stubborn.” I muttered, glancing at the lingering yellow stains on my own finger tips. Life on a conveyer belt, I thought. I was about to ask more about her husband but she was lost now, in memories, painful and long-lasting. I examined her old face with affection. Age had creased her flesh but intelligence and wit remained in her eyes. The shape of her face revealed a lost beauty in the folds of time. It forced my consciousness to look into the future with a harsh realism that hadn’t really struck me before. Life on a conveyer belt, yellowing fingers, the traces of time around the eyes.

The old-lady with her amiable Yorkshire voice left the train at the next stop, not forgetting to leave me with a comforting smile and soft “Take care pet". I watched her move her frail body down the aisle tentatively and apologetically. It’s a disturbing wake up call to finally notice the elderly. We can only avoid it for so long but the reality is as inevitable as rain in Sheffield. I averted my eyes back to the woman in the suit and sympathetic smile, eager to return to an internal sense of equilibrium.

The Bridle

2007-01-25T06:21:00.000-08:00

I run my fingers down bumps,
bends and buckles. It twists and
turns joining metal and
leather into one.

The coiled up contraption is heavy to lift.

I can still hear her boots clomp
along the concrete.
The waterproof coat bustles
against her bosom.

And the bridle in her hand jingle-jangles.

Sometimes I jangled too.
Sometimes wet cheeks were
calmed against masses
of mangled mane.

Child-like anticipation.

My mother lifting the leather.
Easing it onto a mossy poll,
gently pushing its ears aside,
loosening straps, smoothing hairs.

Two wild-domesticated animals stronger than me.

Long ago the clip-clop
sounds resonated through stables.
Reins were snatched from me as
I cried over bruises, breaks and bumps.

"Straight back on the horse," it barks.

That metal and leather collision,
from fire and heat cooled
into place. Restricting
straps and buckles.

They lie idle ten years on.

Small

2007-01-23T04:04:00.000-08:00

I have a small head
it's not too wide, too long
or deep.
Your neck and shoulder makes
a nook
just big enough for me.

I have a small hand
it's not too wide, too long
or deep.
Your back arches to make
a dimple
just big enough for me.

Your Life Bores Me

2006-12-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

A heady atmosphere tainted with hashish and cigarette smoke worms it’s way up my nostrils, down to my lungs, into my bloodstream and up to my brain. The girl lying across the sofa next to me is catatonic and breathing heavily onto the gaudy fabric of the tatty piece of 80s memorabilia.

I forget who’s party this is; perhaps Nick’s girlfriend’s… cousin’s… friend’s party or something. They all merge into one lump of forgetful faces, alcoholic hazes and drug tinged interiors. No one cares that I’m here. I brought Vodka.

“Have you seen my cat?”

A small button nose and eyes wide like plates look up at me in obvious confusion.

“His name is Roland,” her voice wavered with concern, “and he has a blue collar.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t. Why don’t you have a look outside.”

She shuffles quietly away and I decide the whole episode has left me unsettled so I head for the bathroom, tripping over hunched bodies expelling their excess as they crouch by the ground and walking past rooms occupied by drug sharers and copulating couples making the air thick with the stench of cum and disease. The bathroom, however, is free.

Feeling unwell I slump to the ground which seems so much closer than it looked. The sink looms over me like the desperate despot that it is, gurning at me like a cunt, and judging my paranoia.

Roland the cat takes one look at me and pukes out of the window.

And all I can think is that life is so much more interesting on a sober afternoon.

An English Summer

2006-10-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Gaggles of shop-girls
gather, in mini-circles
to chitter-chatter
their hour away.

Skater-kids dump
their patched back-packs
slump, sharing ear-phones
and whiling their time.

Middle-aged men,
with their shirt-sleeves rolled
and newspapers rising
to rhythmic respirations.

Fountains rise and fall,
whilst nymphs madly dance
the parents wait patiently
with towels in arms out-stretched.

Dark clouds threaten
pushing away the sunshine,
the parents roll their eyes
and the summer-time pauses.

Once again.

Opposite

2006-10-04T05:46:00.001-07:00

“Can I get you anything?”

The voice floated softly into my consciousness, gently nudging the lazy cognitions of my mind back into action. I raised my sleepy eye-lids to the direction of the soft susserations, to see pretty brown eyes and benign white teeth smiling down. I returned her smile, a little too widely and a little too easgerly but the nervous giggle, touch of the hair and shifting of the eyes all indicated she liked me. Women liked me.

“Whiskey please.”

She served me with perfect obedience and in double-quick time. It wasn’t really necessary as at midday on Monday the bar was hardly heaving. Whether the girl was trying to impress me, I don't know. I kept my gaze focussed on her the entire time, watching the ebony hair gloss and swing with perky enthusiasm and I lingered with the change to gently smooth the ivory skin on her hand. Yes she was beautiful, but just a girl.

The bar had grown out of date. Trendsetting modernity needs constant updating for longevity, and this bar was well over-due for refurbishment. These days it survived mainly from the quickly depleting wallets of the local alcoholic community. I come in here sometimes. Not quite often enough to be a regular, have a regular stool, regular drink, regular waitress. But often enough.

Across the other side of the bar, at a window table nursing a half-empty glass of red wine some girl is looking straight at me. Nope, scrap that she’s looking straight through me. Completely entranced by something I don’t care to even speculate on; the thoughts occupying the female mind are far beyond my comprehension.

But she is certainly beautiful. And this time, not just a girl, she really is a woman. She doesn’t just sit there, she’s poised like all confident beautiful women should be. And her hair looks so soft I want to push my unworthy fingers through it, tangle myself in it, wrap it round my finger and pull it. I feel drawn to her in a strange way, different to that usual feeling you get when you see a woman you want to chat up. This feels slightly alien, which unnerves me.

There is coldness set in the stolid, far-away expression which adds to my apprehension. But you look deeper and melancholy green eyes reveal a softer side than you get with the average ice-maiden. Curiosity is taking over and I have to hedge my bets.

I feel my back stiffen as I walk, my steps falter a little and I fidget with my collar. I haven’t felt this nervous since I had spots and a dodgy perm. She doesn’t notice me approach her, not even when I am stood right next to the table. What is she so occupied with?

“Erm, excuse me?” Her glazed eyes blinked away whatever had been so captivating and slowly she focused them onto me. The cold-set features dissipated almost too easily; I was taken aback by it. “Would you like some company? I’m also drinking alone so…”

“Of course, sit down.” She smiled at me with welcoming ease. And I actually breathed an audible sigh of relief.

Now I’m closer to her, I realise she is a lot younger than I expected. Probably in her late twenties, if that. But she is more also more of a woman and not at all cold. Quite the opposite really, every feature and every part of her body seems to be warm and soft. Her features and her body make her the stereotypical … You expect drunken lullabies to be sung followed by dirty jokes and countless flirtations. That is, until you look in her eyes.

The windows to this soul show a querulous solicitude. And on the table lies a pen and untidy sheets of paper splayed next to a bottle of wine tattooed by a hasty scrawl. It is immediately clear there are more dimensions to this human being.

“So what’s your name?” Her voice was quiet and susurrated through my ears.

“Harry” I said, smiling uncontrollably. She made you smile, I don’t know how.

“Harry…?”

“Burgess.”

“Nice to meet you Harry Burgess.” She extended a chipper, rounded arm to me. I took her hand and wanted to hold it far longer than appropriate. “I’m Sadie, Sadie Aduley.”

“What a lovely name.” As soon as I said I wanted to repeatedly punch myself in the face for its banality. “Would you like a cigarette?” More banality but those eyes nearly made me stutter with nerves.

“No thankyou, I don’t smoke. But I don’t mind if you do. Please go ahead.”

I felt kind of rude, but desperately needed to calm my nerves. Something about this woman haunted me like no one I had ever met. It was definitely in those melancholy eyes.

So we are sat staring at each other through the cigarette haze. I had already gulped down half of my whiskey and was feeling it’s warmth suffuse through my blood. Eyeing the pen and paper I ask:

“Are you a writer?”

“No not really,” she giggled. “I write for pleasure, yes, but a writer, no.” She sighed as she said this. It was incredible how her expression could change from friendly and cheerful to despondent in a matter of milli-seconds. She looked so beautiful behind the smoke I actually had to bite my lower-lip.

“I’m sorry I was interrupting you.”

“No not at all.” Another flip back to sweet and cheerful, it was revealing. This was an expert in hiding her emotions. Either that or an expert in changing them. ‘Please stay, its so nice to have company. Oh, I was only writing this story. Well, trying I suppose. Trying and failing.”

“What is it about?” I asked without thinking, without even having to feign an interest. “Oh God, sorry that was terribly intrusive.”

She laughed and waved my apology away. “Don’t be silly, I brought it up didn’t I? Oh,” she sighed again morphing into the melancholic alter-ego. “It’s this story about this girl. In her twenties, still young. Younger than me. She sits in this café everyday to get away from the world. Just to be on her own really. She thinks that she isn’t ordinary and doesn’t fit in. So she likes to sit and think on her own without pressures of other people.” She smiled, a little embarrassed, “I’m afraid it is going to sound silly to you.”

“I sincerely doubt it.” I reassured. “It sounds fascinating already.”

“Ok, well you see, she is one of those people who was always quiet, kind of depressive. A strange child buried in a book. No one quite understands a child like that do they? Don’t know what to do with them. Adults get slightly confused and almost disgusted at children that aren’t loud and rambunctious.

So she grows up in this strange kind of bubble on her own. She feels like if she lets people get close to her, they will burst her bubble.” She stopped, “this is crazy isn’t it?”

“No it’s not please continue.”

“Alright. So I suppose, what any sensitive young girl does when she’s growing up, she quickly learns that people easily gets bored with other people’s misery. So she becomes the opposite. Because what’s the point in being miserable and alone, right? She manipulates herself into someone funny and cheerful, watches and assimilates other people’s characteristics until she’s not herself anymore. Because that’s the price you pay for popularity you see. And so now, in her early twenties, she sits in that café to think about who she is. Because no matter how much she changes her demeanor, she cannot change her thoughts.

And when she goes in there, often sees this guy. Who sits alone, drinks tea, stares out of the window and occasionally scribbles in a notepad. And she is convinced he is her soulmate. The one person on Earth who can look at her with the same confused eyes looking back every night in the mirror. She is convinced this person is built upon opposites like her. So one day, she walks up to him and says: ‘Are you a man of opposites?’

The trouble is, I want them to fall in love. And I want to be able to write their relationship and explain what it is like being all confused and full of opposites. And I want it to show how the world contradicts itself, that she isn’t different. She just personifies the chaos we live in and doesn’t realise.

But when I try to write it, I get so confused myself that I can’t express it coherently.” She laughed “Stupid really, I know. And it’s a stupid story I shouldn’t bother but I have to.”

Until she had stopped talking, I hadn’t noticed how utterly intoxicated with her words I had been. I watched her eyes the entire time, and it was like watching her life being played on her retinas. I had been gazing through the cavernous black pupils, into her eye down the optic nerve right into her minds-eye and watched this fragile young girl in her nascent. It was incredible, I had never experienced anything like it.

“I bored you didn’t I?” She looked hurt and embarrassed.

“No,” I said barely recovered. “You really haven’t. It was completely fascinating. And the girl in story, she’s you isn’t she?”

She nodded. “It is quite obvious isn’t it? Even to a stranger. Oh well.” I watched her sip her wine to distract her embarrassment.

“It’s the look in your eye when you talk. You can see that you mean it, every word. And you can tell that it is real and now just a story. You want to be able to write this story to help you understand yourself, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She looked at me with cold green eyes, blocking out the emotional tide behind them. “So why did you come to talk to me? And be honest.”

“I wanted to talk you into bed.” I couldn’t lie to her.

“What do you want to do now?”

“Know everything about you.”

She held my gaze for a long time assessing my answers with thought and care. And then smiled wide and warm with hints of coyness. How many smiles does this woman have?

“So do you usually succeed?” It was almost a challenge.

“Pardon?”

“At talking women into bed?”

“Oh erm, well yes actually.” I didn’t want to sound like such a prick but I honestly could not lie to that face.

“I can imagine. You have the eyes of a charmer, a smile easily faked and words easily formed. Why should I trust you?”

“I don’t know, I honestly don’t.” I was so nervous now I could feel sweat forming at my temples and hoped she wouldn’t notice. The thought of her leaving now made my stomach turn. “All I know, is that for some reason I can’t lie to you. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t need to fake an interest. You are fascinating to me.”

When I said that she smiled a little and looked away, embarrassed but pleased. After recovering, she looked up at me again, fixing those large melancholy eyes directly on mine, all of a sudden full of concern.

“One of the first times you don’t have to fake interest? Why is that? Have you lost your interest in women?” She said to me softly, almost sympathetically.

“I don’t know, I can’t explain. Maybe I’ve just lost interest in the world. It used to be utterly beautiful to me, I could find interest in a blade of grass or cloud in the sky. I know that is a cliché, but it is how I felt.”

“It should never be a cliché to be romantic, you should never be embarrassed about being a romantic. Being a romantic is the most wonderful thing in the world. Don’t you think?”

“I used to.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up one day and everything looked different. Darker, damper almost. It was like the beauty had suddenly been watered and slowed down. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense. But don’t you think you can still find beauty in this new dark damp world? Maybe you just need to change what you think is beautiful.”

“I think I already have.”

“Well then that’s good isn’t it?”

I was thinking about this now. It is true how I was a romantic, especially as a young man. The world was this fascinating playground of heady excitation. I had been quixotic in my approach to life almost to the point of complete annoyance to those around me. I don’t know what changed, whether it was the disintegration of my marriage or reaching the ‘mid-point’ to my life. But I really did wake up to a dampened existence. This girl is right, I do find that beautiful now, but because it beguiles me. I want to know why the world changed for me, and somehow embracing this change may be how this question is answered.

When it came to women, I had always preferred the chipper, charming and alluring. If this girl had sat in front of me maybe ten years ago, there would never have been this utter attraction and need I have for her now. She beguiles me like the world and I need to embrace her.

“I think that it is good I have met you.”

“Why do you say that?” She looked completely taken aback. Almost as though no one in her whole life had ever found her interesting.

“Because for the first time in a very long time, I feel that I need someone.”

“You need me? But why? You’ve only just met me!”

“I feel like with you I can finally understand the world. I know it sounds crazy but I can see something in your eyes that makes everything make more sense. I’m sorry I’m probably scaring you, but I just can’t lie to you.”

“You’re not scaring me, I just don’t see why me?”

“Let me tell you a bit about me, because I haven’t. My wife left me five years ago, and around the same time the world changed for me. Like I said, it seems darker, damper and more despondent to me. I don’t know if it is because of my wife leaving, or my new take on the world is why she left me, but that’s what happened. And around that time my life seemed darker and more despondent like the world, but in particular and of most importance. Empty. When you were telling me your story of the girl, quietly and naturally depressive in her bubble a natural loner, it reminded me of myself. But who I am now, who I have become and I don’t know why. I was a quixotic person, far too enthused with the world, utterly annoying to those who saw the dark world I see now. But the world I see now is all I see in your eyes, and I just have this feeling I need you to understand this dark alien place.”

“Want to go for a walk? I really need to get out of here.”

“I’d love to.”

I let her lead the way, watching the way she walked with interest. She wasn’t overtly sexual or obvious in any way, but it was still sexy. The kind of woman who had been underrated her whole life, and you wanted to be the person to finally appreciate her like she should be. She walked slowly and dragged her feet a little, but still somehow did it with ease and grace. It was a conundrum how she managed to personify all these strange contradictions continuing to beguile me further.

“Where would you like me to take you Harry?” She turned and looked at me with an expectant and submissive expression that was so utterly tempting I had the urge to kiss her. And I did. She was warm and responded without resistance; it lasted only a few seconds I kept my eyes open and looked into hers. Up close those eyes were more despondent than anything I had ever seen.

“I’m sorry.” I said, still holding her close to me.

“Don’t apologise. Where would you like me to take you?”

“Your favourite place in the whole world.”

“Alright.”

She took my hand and started walking, nearly running along the pavement. The city was quietest mid-afternoon, disturbed relatively infrequently by the half-empty busses and taxis. Normal people were at work, not half-cut following the love of your life that you’d just met to her favourite place. I’d always known I wasn’t normal. Finally I had some proof! It takes a girl with melancholic eyes and a contradictory gait to make me realise this.

She practically dragged my down roads, across pedestrian crossings. I had no idea where we were going or what was going to happen. It was the first time in the last ten years I had felt even a minute bit of exhilaration.

Sadie was speeding up now, becoming more anxious.

“Keep up,” she enthused, “or we’ll miss it.”

“Miss what?”

“You’ll see.”

We were running down the street, and suddenly she yanked me to the left, up and on a bus. We paid the fare and clambered into a seat gasping for air. She was so close to me, and I nuzzled my face into her hair, breathing in the scent and suffocating myself in its softness. And stayed like that for the whole journey. I could think of worse ways to die.

I have no idea how long the journey lasted, time seemed a strange concept all of a sudden. It had no reference, no reason to exist. It was no longer important to me. When the bus stopped we were no longer in the city, we were somewhere bleak and empty.

She took my hand again, taking the lead and pulled me across the narrow country road towards the moors surrounding it. There was nothing apart from this road and the moors. Nothing at all.

We climbed over a gate, I did it with less ease and grace than she. And walked hand in hand across the moor, in complete silence. Again, I have no idea how long we walked, time was no longer an important concept to me. The moor was completely empty, there were not even trees or landmarks, but an endless, despondent green lawn.

Finally the landscape began to change, as we walked, you could vaguely view and end to the despondent lawn in front of us. Sadie walked us almost to the edge of the cliff and stopped.

“This is your favourite place in the whole world?” I was puzzled more so than ever. The edge of a cliff in the middle of some horrifically bleak moors. It made no sense.

“There is nowhere lonelier, or more melancholic than the moors. I feel myself here, I really do. You don’t have to answer to anyone, to pretend to be anything other than yourself.” She sat down on the grass, her legs over the edge of the cliff, toes pointing down to the cavern below. I could hardly bare to see her in such danger. “Can I tell you something about you?”

“Of course.”

“I’m the first person to fill your emptiness, because you see me and see something that is even more lonely, even more despondent and complaining than yourself. I intrigue you because it distracts you from your own life. How long do you think this fascination will last? Do you really believe you have seen the answer to your life’s problems in my eyes? Am I really what you want? I don’t think so. Yes I am beguiling and different to everyone else, and you understand me more than most I will give you that. You want to be the person to make me realise I am worthy and you want to be the first person to fully appreciate me. But really all you want to do is fill your life with something, anything. You are desperate, and I am your game.

It is not my fault you fail to understand your sadness. And I am not the answer.”

She stood up and walked over to me. I was intoxicated by her gaze, a mixture of sadness, anxiety, empathy and cruelty. When close she kissed me, I grabbed her and at that exact moment I felt a dull thudding pain at the back of my head. I fell on to her, but she pushed me away and I fell to the floor. Through a haze of clouded consciousness I watched her walk away slightly dragging her gliding feet.

*********************************************************************************

Time of course had no matter, I awoke God knows when and managed to stagger back to the bus stop. Whether it was the next day I had no idea.

I know why she hit me. Because she knew this was the only way to stop me from following her. I wasn’t her man in the café, but unfortunately she was mine. And after many failed attempts at finding her, I sit in that bar every single day just hoping she would walk in with that contradictory gait and flash me that warm smile with melancholy eyes.

The Conveyer Belt

2006-10-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

I never noticed it before but sitting on a train is a little like being stuck on a conveyer belt. Your moving at this tremendous pace whilst the world stays still. The train chundles past the scenery without caring to slow down for you to even see it properly. It’s all a big green and grey blur; cities, fields, trees. They all merge together like the painting of a two year old spoiled by a misplaced glass of water.

I’m opposite a young woman in a suit who's been reading the same page of the newspaper for an hour now. She looks up and makes some brief eye-contact with tired brown eyes. I avoid it as I avoid everything. Nevertheless she offers me a smile, and I note the faint shade of sympathy in her features. I must look how I feel.

The old lady next to me begins to offer her pearls of wisdom on the annoyance of trains and other topics that couldn’t have any less meaning. It's as English as watching TV programmes you don’t really enjoy just to shout at the screen and then ring up Points of View to complain. Typical English conversations with strangers are like small, but polite, pieces of nothing wrapped in indifference. We make up for our insecure feelings of discomfort with the random ramblings of inanity.

My fag-stained fingers drum the Formica table and I wonder when I should get off the train. She’s chattering about her son now; like the lonely do. They have no one so they tell strangers. I know this because I often do the same thing. Perhaps not really out of loneliness, although sometimes I am, but out of this demanding, dissident feeling that I need to tell someone. Barriers prevent me telling everyone I should. It's much easier with unfamiliar faces, you can’t disappoint someone who doesn’t know you; it doesn’t matter if they judge you. The transaction is flawless, they listen with morbid curiosity and you exhale with catharsis. Intimacy is much easier with a stranger, it's fearless and meaningless.

“What’s your name love?” asked the old lady in kind Yorkshire vernacular.

“Lucy”

“Lovely!” she leaned a little closer and patted my arm, “If I’d had daughter I was gonna name ‘er Lucy. But it turned out to be a boy.” She smiled at her memories “Wouldn’t change it for the world duck. But mind you, I think a daughter would’ve been nice.”

“Did you ever try for another child? For a daughter?”

“No, Percy, me husband died a few years after John was born.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault, love, not your fault.” She sighed and clutched her tan leather handbag with tenacity. “Those cancer sticks that did ‘im in. But, aye, you couldn’t get ‘im to give ‘em up. Ooooohhh no, he never would. Selfish man.”

“Men can be so stubborn.” I muttered, glancing at the lingering yellow stains on my own finger tips. Life on a conveyer belt, I thought. I was about to ask more about her husband but she was lost now, in memories, painful and long-lasting. I examined her old face with affection. Age had creased her flesh but intelligence and wit remained in her eyes. The shape of her face revealed a lost beauty in the folds of time. It was saddening, and forced my consciousness to look into the future with a harsh realism that hadn’t properly struck me before. Life on a conveyer belt, yellowing fingers, the traces of time around the eyes. I looked to the future with dread and despair.

The old-lady with her amiable Yorkshire voice left the train at the next stop, but didn’t forget to leave me with a comforting smile and soft “Take care pet". I watched her move her frail body down the aisle tentatively and apologetically. It is a disturbing wake up call to finally notice the elderly. The young can only avoid it for so long but reality is as inevitable as showers over Sheffield in April. I averted my eyes back to the woman in the suit and sympathetic smile, eager to return to an internal sense of equilibrium.

Her thoughts were obviously troubled. Her eyes remained focussed on the same page of the broadsheet whilst her mind wandered another world and creased her forehead with the mental exertion. Those lines make me think she has work troubles. Boyfriend troubles would darken her brow with anger but only a cloud of worry haunted her pretty face.

She fidgeted a little, silver bangles singing in soft jingling tones as she did. Her hair was scraped back without care, tendrils trailing the collar of her imperfect modern suit. There was a celtic band wrapped round her left thumb like a snake at rest. Instead of a briefcase, a canvas shoulder bag nestled in her lap with the corner of her CD player poking out of the opening.

She dislikes her job, I thought to myself, and she's into her music. She's a graduate who started in this job temporarily, and 5 years down the line she's still there. The ease of settling for the familiar has gripped her like a sponge and drained out motivation and ambition. I bet she is a PA or in admin. Some kind of dressed up secretarial position with a comfortable wage and decent level of security. Perhaps in a trendy company in London, in an up-and-coming area like advertising. She's visiting up north to asses the new companies emerging on the instructions of her boss.

Looking at her I realise we all line the conveyer belt. We all watch things pass us by. Outside we pass another gigantic oak tree, it's bark gnarled like the face of the old lady who had been sat next to me. I want to grab it and make the conveyer belt stop. Looking around, there is life on the train we so easily let slip by. Conoodling teenagers entwined in arms and ear phones from their iPods; young parents giggle with their children spinning loving webs of affection around their squirming bodies; cliques of school kids create a racket with their mobile phones, annoying a whole generation of seriousness.

I’m on this conveyer belt looking out, desperately trying to grasp that tree and slow it down so I can have a proper look. I’m absorbing all this too fast. I spend most of my life there, and here and everywhere but nowhere. I need to get off this train and get back on in the opposite direction to start again.