WINTERLAND

The temperature hovers around zero.  I am in a reflective mood on a train to Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  Now that I have joined the serried ranks of the semi-retired, I make this journey every week for three days a week, staying at my youngest sister’s house in Railway Terrace, Wallsend.  I keep an eye out for my elderly mother whilst both of my sisters are out working and helping the Economy. I normally find things to do – gluing the broken handles back onto teacups, that sort of thing. On this trip, I have to wash a duvet cover, and the excitement is already mounting at the thought. 
There are ten people in the carriage of this Cross-Country train, which will meander on to Plymouth once it has dropped me off at Newcastle. The seats of the Cross Country trains are reasonably comfortable, unlike the ‘Mallard’ seats on the East Coast Main Line trains, which are so wretched and poorly designed that I’d rather sit on a real mallard. 
This is the Quiet Coach, a fact that has escaped one male peroxide blond youth who is speaking loudly, with a West Country accent, into a mobile phone.   He is brought smartly to account by a beer-drinking Glaswegian seated opposite, who says ‘Hey, Jimmy, pipe doon an tak’ yon machine into the vestibool.’ The bottle-blond Bristolian does as he is bid, though not shamefacedly. I nod my approval to the beer-drinker.  I was on the cusp of intervening myself, but, as usual, I never quite got round to it.  The beer-drinker is engrossed in ‘The Sun’.  His sleeves are rolled up and I can see his very masculine snake and dragon tattoo, which tells me he is not a man to be messed around with.
I don’t see any women in the carriage – just a collection of men.  All of them are younger than me.  They don’t have faces like Tommy Cooper’s, their hair isn’t visibly greying every day, and their broad mind and narrow waist haven’t swapped places.  I am suitably envious.  
I am making the journey in the dark, and, as there are about three pinpricks of light between Dunbar and Berwick, looking out of the window is a useless occupation, similar to searching for fireflies at the North Pole. There is nothing much to do other than to examine my travelling colleagues in some detail, the quartet that I can see, in any case.  One of them looks like a young Mickey Rooney, the second, John Lithgow of ‘Third Rock From The Sun’, the third, the teenage offspring of Johnny Morris of ‘Zoo Quest’ fame and the fourth, Max Headroom.  Two men embark at Berwick.  The first resembles Officer Dibble from ‘Top Cat,’ the second Alec Guinness in his most placid and beatific George Smiley mode.  I note with satisfaction that at least there is now someone older than me in this carriage.
I hope to get away with using an old ticket that wasn’t checked or stamped last week.  The barriers were open at Newcastle, so my ticket wasn’t swallowed up there either, and it nestles snugly in my wallet.  The guard hasn’t been to check it yet.  Like most law-abiding citizens, I have a fear that there will be some indelible mark on the ticket that only he or she can see, and I’ll be frog-marched off the train at Morpeth, in perpetual disgrace, for the want of ten pounds thirty, stripped of the ability ever again to arrange a bank loan.  In the event, I do get away with it, though .  In the event, I get away with it, though the guard could hardly fail to notice the buckets of sweat pouring down from my fevered brow as he peruses the ticket.  Finally, after what seems an eternity, but in reality is only eighty minutes, we lumber into platform three at the Central Station and a new adventure has begun.