THE TRAIN HOME

Just pelted it for a train that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I could have taken a leisurely stroll across Oxford station, taking in the bridge and the sweeping view of the train now arriving at Platform 3. Nope. Sitting in a stationary carriage with my heart pounding inside my coat.

It’s okay. I’m on my way home, one way or the other. Could be worse. I could be walking.

The engines have roared into life now. We’re off. The station moves out of sight and the evening is car park, street-lamps, office blocks, shimmering track and the deep Prussian blue of night.

I feel a bit fragile this evening. I suppose it’s more than having sprinted aboard. More of that ‘thin’ feeling I was talking about the other day. Sammy described it as ‘eggshell thin’ - something I wish I’d come up with. You know what they say though: second best to being a genius is to be married to one. I kind of hope she’d say the same.

Work was alright, I guess. Someone had brought in a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle and the students were tackling it in ten-minute breaks. Everybody else was very quiet. Reception had gone overboard on a Valentine’s Day themed breakfast, sticking love-hearts to the desk, and providing pancakes with fruit. I still maintain that if Valentine’s Day really is a celebration of what it purports to be a celebration of, then people at work ought to be the last to celebrate it. I mean it’s not a natural fit to toast the enduring power of love with the people you work with, however nice they are.

Mind you, my reiteration that Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs and had his head stuck on a spike… is probably pushing the sentiment too far in the other direction. Oh and also, call me a hypocrite if you like, for I too wolfed down a couple of heart-shaped chocolates.

The train announcer’s just been on. Apparently there’s an ‘autonomous bus’ leaving from the next stop. I puzzled about what that could possibly mean, but (and I bet you’re a step ahead of me here) it really is a self-driving vehicle. Apparently. We’re in the future, folks. Came faster than expected.

I had that thought earlier at lunchtime. The cool kids were talking about next-level wearable tech and how it might actually be microchips inserted into your arm. I made a face and told Pedro I’d prefer to be dead. He joked that perhaps I already was, given that moments before I’d told them I’d tried poutine once and it was so good I thought it might give me a heart attack. I mustn’t joke about these things.

“My brain’s doing a bang up job inventing all of you lot if I’m not really here,” I said philosophically. Pedro at least, found it funny. I mustn’t joke about these things.

It’s really dark out there now. The window is all reflection - all me in my coat, with my rucksack. Home calls me onwards. You know, I’d have thought there’d be an autonomous train before there were an autonomous bus. The railway feels like a much more controllable network than the roads. Then, says the mischievous part of my brain: how do I know there really is a human driving this one?

Oh, take me home.