I took the train to work for the first time in nearly a year this morning. For old time’s sake I bought a coffee and a muffin, crossed over to the platform where the train was and got on. I sat in the seat that I always used to sit in, one of a group of four seats with a table.
I was always the first to the seat, a compulsion of mine, where I have to be early for everything, but it’s got to be borderline OCD to be so early every day that the earlier train is still in the station and I won’t get on.
Bald Devil would arrive next, dapperly dressed, clean shaven (face and head) and with pleasantries exchanged, would proceed to surgically butcher, with his razor sharp wit and tongue everything, from that day’s news headline to the fact that I waited, while he sat opposite me, for Crossword Guy to arrive so that I could ask him the meaning of the word ‘surreptitious’. He still has never forgiven me for that. It’s not that I thought he was thick and wouldn’t know it, it’s just that Crossword Guy was my word guy and that’s all it was.
Approximately ten minutes after Bald Devil, Giblets would appear, stand in the doorway until he finished his cigarette and with all of the coordination of a man whose body looks as if it is being controlled by a committee where every member is trying to get their own way, he would climb into a seat, usually the one next to me, stinking of stale beer and cigarettes, would take a book from his inside pocket, open his page, remove his bookmark and promptly fall asleep, mouth open, drooling.
As the train was ready to leave, Emptyhead was always the last to join us, sweaty browed and slightly puffed breath he would put his jacket in the overhead bin, remove a newspaper, a pen and a bottle of water from his bag and sit down. The seat was complete.
That was then, today, Bald Devil is gone, taken up residence in another country, Giblets failed to appear, more than likely sleeping through whatever alcohol induced coma he managed to drink himself into last night and Emptyhead is in Australia for the foreseeable future.
It was a completely different train journey this morning than from what I remembered. The train trundled to a halt in each of the stations, passengers boarded and I didn’t recognise any of the faces. No ‘Always in Disguise Man’ in Laytown, no ‘Balbriggan Bollix’ and no ‘Skerries Girl’. For the entire journey I wondered about the ghosts of journeys past, then I realised, that, just like me, the rest of my once then world had moved on to newer, and I hope, better times. That’s just the way things are.
