ANOTHER HAZLITT MOMENT

Thursday morning, tra-la-la. Rain streaks along the carriage windows, making it difficult for me to see. Podgy Boy opposite presses the keys of his computer. He doesn't look too clean, and he smells a little musty, like an antique dish-cloth. The sky is lowering, rent here and there by a faint slash of blue. The 0730 to Inverurie is full of the usual suspects: freewheeling backpackers, brash American tourists, impoverished students dressed from the skip, and inscrutable young Chinese listening to their i-pods. I'm on my way to Dundee for the twenty-third time this year. The pattern is always the same. Get up blearily at 05:50, shovel in a few spoonfuls of coco-pops, brush my teeth and hair, drive to Drem station, catch the 06:50 to Waverley, then this train, alight on the rain-swept platform of the grimly hideous Dundee station at 08:40. A five-minute walk past Scott's remarkable ship and I'm at the office. The rail journey is spectacular. We pass over the glorious Forth Bridge, hug the coast of Fife until we drift inland to skirt farmers' fields and little photo-opportunity villages and finally across the silvery Tay on a bridge that feels almost as ricketty as its predecessor that Bouch built from iron pyrites and slag and which blew over in a high wind 130 years ago. Out at sea, a fillet of bright light illuminates a couple of medium-size ships reposing, waiting their turn to dock at Burntisland. A young American girl talks into her mobile phone. She speaks exasperatedly to her companion, a man who looks very much like Del Shannon did when he sang 'Swiss Maid', seemingly about a century and a half ago. "Golly, gee, Avery, that's twice I've been cut off. What is this place, anyway?" He shrugs non-committedly. He is anxious not to start an argument with her within earshot of forty-seven other people, who are desperately waiting for him to do precisely that. It is a humid day, and the air-conditioning has not been switched on in the carriage. I start to perspire. I mop at my face with the serviette I received with my coffee. I am careful to ensure that the lid on the cardboard cup of coffee is a tight fit. On my last journey, it wasn't, and I ended up having to telephone ahead for someone to buy me a new shirt. The last traces of summer are apparent in the embankments - the odd flash of pink from Rose-bay willow herb and white from the untidy Russian Vine. A herd of Friesian cows contentedly chews the cud. The American, Avery, bites into a muffin. Strange, the resemblance. A group of teenage schoolchildren , smart and neat in their blue uniform blazers, stand in an orderly queue at a bus-stand in one of the photo-opportunity villages. Podgy Boy watches them, pleased to have graduated from school to college and the opportunity to develop oil-slick hair and to shower every time there is a full moon. The rain hits the River Tay like machine-gun bullets. I put on my raincoat, struggling as always to manouevre the wristband past my watch. I am standing near the door, awaiting its opening to allow mw to disgorge onto the platform, when Podgy Boy walks up to me. "You left this," he says in a pleasant and well-modulated voice. He hands me my mobile phone, which I have carelessly left on the table. I smile, thank him, and blush from the very roots of my hair downwards. Yet again, I have entirely misjudged a fellow-member of the human race. Appearances really do mean nothing. Not for the first time, I am reminded of the words of William Hazlitt: "Prejudice is the child of ignorance."