A TALE OF TWO TICKETS

I don't know why I've remembered it this year. Most years, the date just goes right past me and it's only a few days later that I click my fingers and realise. For some reason though, today, I've recalled that it is the 21st of February.

I kept the car-park slip from the station for a long time afterwards. I kept it in a little summery box with other things that reminded me of her: a photograph, the wrapper of a chocolate heart she once gave me, and a poem I wrote for her. Sometimes I'd open that little box and thumb through the memories. Thu Feb 21 2002, said the numbers on the yellowing square of printed paper. Proof then. Proof that I had been there at Reading Station, that I had offered her a lift home, had nervously asked her out and had been astonished when she said yes. Proof that I had embarked on an incredible relationship with the most beautiful girl I knew.

I kept another ticket too for a long time: a train ticket with a very different date - 13 Nov 2002. I remember holding it in a gloved hand as I slumped into the seat by the window. I stared at my weary reflection as Cambridge station jolted into motion and began to recede into the night. Blackness overtook and soon I was hurtling away from her with nothing but sadness and confusion. Her life had changed and everything was different in that bright bubble of a place - specifically, there was no room for me, a shadow of the past and a stranger in a land of cleverer people - I knew it, and so did she, long before I'd worked it out.

The ticket told the story - from Cambridge to Reading, a long dark journey, rushing through fields and floods and the lonely night, every moment further and further away from her. But it was where I needed to be.

I don't have either of those two tickets any more. I let them go a long time ago and allowed my heart to heal without the afflictions of the past tempting me from an old box. I've been back to Cambridge Station many times since (it's on the mainline to Ely) and it no longer bites. All is well.

It's just on days like this, when the date leaps out, I remember 2002 and I am at least, thankful for that cloudy February day, that beautiful sparkling summer and that cold confusing autumn - because all of it's part of my learning, part of my story and part of what makes me me.