CITY OF DISCOVERY

I boarded the 0728 to Inverurie for the very last time. The pitiful wall heater in the Drem station waiting-room hadn’t been working and I was freezing cold. My business in Dundee was almost finished. Outside, the air felt cold and mean. The morning was as dark as a slate quarry. The train was busy, as usual, filled up with oil executives for Aberdeen, geologists for Inverness and, for all I knew, peanut vendors for Dyce. First Scotrail had taken the opportunity over the New Year to jack up the fare by several points above inflation, to bring forward the time of departure, and to change the platform to the one furthest away from the main concourse. As usual, I struggled to drag my heavy case into the luggage area. My defective right shoulder means I cannot lift anything much heavier than a teaspoon. The chap across the table from me looked like George C. Scott, the American actor who played, inter alia, General Patten in the eponymous film Patten: Lust For Glory. He wore a Regatta Great Outdoors khaki-coloured anorak and a matching olive shirt and tie. His computer case was a Dell. He read ‘The Scotsman’ and didn’t look my way.

I longed for coffee and an aspirin. I couldn’t see the water as we rattled over the mighty Forth Bridge. The far-away lights of the Fife coast were but pin-pricks in the great firmament. We drifted past Inverkeithing, where the sky lightened a shade, to herald the dawn. Rooftops stood in silhouette against the sky and I could just make out the naked skeletons of the trees. I felt tired; jaded. I had been working at my trade for far too long. I had a pain behind my eyes from thinking too much. The worry-lines on my brow were now as deep as a Bewick lithograph. We pushed on, towards Kircaldy. A faint red slash appeared in the eastern sky. I could make out a few gossamer clouds. Things were taking shape and form. Behind George C. sat a young, blonde woman with squirrel cheeks. She stared blankly out over the flat sands of Burntisland. I wondered what was on her mind – a failed love-affair, perhaps? Trouble with her parents? Concern about the escalating price of eggs? I finally came to the conclusion that her expression was caused by short-sightedness and that she probably needed glasses. After all, I am no Sherlock Holmes.

We pulled into Kircaldy. George C. got off and Alan Pardew, the Newcastle United Manager, took his place. The resemblance was remarkable. Pardew took ages to find his newspapers and sit down. He wore a suit similar to my own. I wondered if his had cost £49 in Asda. His computer case was a Hewlett-Packard. He read ‘The Scotsman’. He didn’t look my way. There was still no coffee. I was desperate. Eventually, I heard the sound of squeaking wheels. The trolley-dolly wasn’t the usual Latvian girl with two words of English – he was an old bald man in Joe 90 spectacles. The coffee tasted like the old ‘Camp’ coffee and chicory essence I remember from the early 1950s, but it revived me immediately.

Blondie was smiling now because she was looking at her text machine, which always seems to thrill young women. Pardew drank his coffee black. We headed north. Everywhere there was evidence of recent heavy rain. A horse stood knee deep in mud in a field the other corner of which had transformed itself into a small lake. The sky seemed to brighten only incrementally. Car headlights sliced through the dim light on the side roads criss-crossing the area around Cupar and Leuchars.

We swung into a bend and then out onto the Tay Bridge with the huge river just below After a year of traveling back and forth, the curtain was about to come down. I had served my clients as well as I could, and hoped that they had gained something from my presence. I had made some new friends, and had explored Dundee inch by inch. I had a computer full of photographs and a file full of rail tickets to remind me of the city and the quirky train journeys that had given me so much pleasure. We pulled into Dundee station and I realised that, in the City of Discovery, I had made my very last voyage.