CALEDONIAN DAYBREAK

It was a gloomy morning, scarcely light. The rain pitter-pattered, forming watery slicks on the unguarded Waverley platform. I was en-route to an exhibition in Glasgow, where I was helping to man a stand (should that now be ‘person’ a stand)? I caught the 08:08 National Express train to Glasgow Central. With its swanky seats and spacious, near-empty carriages, this was a much better way to travel than the packed Queen Street rattler. I bought coffee. It was dear at £2.25. I checked carefully that the lid on the cup was tight. I had no desire to allow the contents to spill down my shirt-front, as they did on the way to Dundee the other week. We slid along this old Caledonian Railway line through the West Lothian countryside, passing lines of stunted trees, bings, scars and troughs, testament to a long-forgotten industrial past. We passed a huge reservoir, the size of a small loch, surrounded by dishevelled fields of brown earth and sparse grass. We saw broken farm buildings in pools of water and a few disaffected cattle resting in the lee of the rain. We witnessed skeins of geese flying low in ‘v’ formation, setting their beaks against the ponderous weather. We watched a field of sheep with their rumps dyed blue. I speculated whether sheep are pessimists, glass half-full or glass half-empty. I wondered idly whether the blue was slapped on to the sheep’s behinds to help the sheepdogs see them better in the half-light.

I love the train – it offers so many opportunities for the fertile imagination; how could one feel stress on a day such as this, even on a day when the grey sky stretched out its hand to caress the land? A chance to ponder, to observe, to listen, to see a changing, evolving landscape, no matter how drear. We hove into Lanarkshire and pretty soon crawled past the forbidding grey hulk of Carstairs Prison, our slow speed dictated by complex junctions and timid signals. Two seats down, a Chinese girl sat in a deep sleep, her head wedged against the window, her mouth slightly open, dreaming her life away. We picked up speed and swept past a level-crossing, at which several cars waited, headlights shining, window-wipers clacking like knitting needles. I’d forgotten that this was a much longer route than the old North British, and I feared I would be late for my billet. The guard spoke over the intercom, a strangled, fractured voice, ‘Motherwell in a few minutes.’ The final quarter of an hour into Glasgow Central was accentuated by ash-grey buildings, plenty of dereliction and wasteland, and very slow speeds. An optimistic sign near Cambuslang read ‘80’; we were doing about 10. Eventually, we crossed the mighty Clyde and came to a halt in the finest station in the United Kingdom. I stepped down onto the platform and, not for the first time, gazed in awe at the sight that surrounded me. No matter how grim the exhibition was to be, the features of Glasgow Central would keep me cheerful for the whole day.