A SMART-MAN TEACHES ME THREE NEW WORDS

I caught a train yesterday, and as is the way of things, that meant waiting for it on a station platform.

They're odd places, platforms: brightly lit pavements between rivers of railway tracks, sometimes crowded with silent people, sometimes bleak and empty.

It was definitely the latter last night. The board flashed orange numbers, a porter in a luminous GWR jacket pushed a broom round the concrete, and the night breeze blew softly in my ears.

In the end, a man with smart boot-length brogues sat down next to me and flipped open an iPad. One brogue slipped over the other and he sighed as he opened his Scrabble app.

Now, tell me this: when is it okay to sneakily peek? My trouble is that I love Scrabble and I couldn't resist watching the drama unfold - and drama there was.

Fair enough, reading people's texts would be too much wouldn't it? Maybe even having a sly corner-of-the-eye glance at someone scrolling through flippybook... I reasoned with myself that this smart man playing Scrabble with his iPad was okay.

And so I watched.

The CPU played 'AWAY'.

The smart-man slid his fingers across the screen and played the word, 'QAT' for a gazillion points.

I looked it up. Qat is a type of Arabian tea. Impressive.

The CPU, which was obviously set to TOWIE-level difficulty, played 'YO' and the smart-man shook his head.

After a few moments (and it really wasn't long) he smugly played the word 'FAITOUR' and sat there grinning at himself.

What in the world is faitour? I asked myself. It wasn't in my dictionary. That (like so many sad stories) went straight from faithlessness to fait accomplis.

No 'faitour'. What does it even mean? Who is this smart-man?

The next word he played was 'APORIA' which my dictionary told me is a sort of helplessness in what to say or which course of action to take.

Discovering a kind of aporia of my own, I said to myself, I'm not going to watch any more. The smart-man would thrash me at Scrabble as though I had only just started reading and were still getting the hang of it.

I went back to staring at the clock and counting down the seconds until my train arrived.

At least I had learned three new words, I suppose. I doubt I'll get to use them though, at least without sounding like some sort of wordy... faitour.

Ha.