It was safe terrain for conversation. When the gentleman next
to me extrapolated the beauty of train stations in England it wasn’t difficult
to indulge  and slip in a few notable
stations;  Bristol Temple Meads, Huddersfield,
 Hebden Bridge and not least Victoria
station in Manchester.  He nods at my
choices:  small eyes,  bald, about fifty, a whispering  essex accent,  divorced, two children,   a slightly slimmer version of Phil  Mitchell from Eastenders,   so
softly spoken I had to lean in and strain  to listen.

Nor does he look at me but stares straight forward to the
seat in front  bemoaning  the rail infrastructure and I agree furthering
that the politics of the railway  benefit
private companies and political parties to the detriment of the public:   Safe
terrain. “It’s not like it used to be” he says “not like in the good old days
of The Empire.”  It’s going to be a long
journey I think.

We are on the plane to Spain where the rain stays mainly on
the plane and The Journalist is sat
across the aisle from me.   Safe Terrain.   “don’t
get me talking about soaps” he wanders. 
I honestly wasn’t going to. 
“suicide street I call it”  he
spits  referring  to Coronation St.  “England isn’t what it was thirty years ago” which
is why he lives in Spain I guess. “You could leave your doors open then ”   he says  as if leaving your door open were a  panacea:  as if people were as open as their open doors.

 I needn’t cast my
mind back thirty years.  Nowhere is what
it used to be.  Today yesterday is not
what it was.   “In the good old days of the empire” he says
“the trains ran brilliantly.”  In the inanity
of naming themselves ex-pats when they are in fact immigrants they are wilderness
people.  “You could leave your doors open
then” is one step away from “when people knew their place.”  England isn’t what it used to be because It
never was.   We are all immigrants of one
kind or another , emigrating from yesterday to today, from the last minute to
the next, from village to town to city.  . 

He galloped through his life story needing only a cursory
glance  before further indulging himself
in himself.  He works in tomatoes and in
his spare time he is a DJ,   “ska music, northern soul, rare groove and
what have you”.  It’s   incongruous to his look of a downbeat
salesman. He has a scar that  “goes from here”
 he rolls up his shirt  and points to his left wrist “to here”  then points to the  inside of his elbow “football  injury.”  He nearly died of MRSA in the hospital .   “Don’t get me started on hospitals…” he
says “MRSA’s  from India – The Indians
brought it.” It’s a deep single rail track 
scar.   “Suicide street I call it” 

 I noticed that
whenever he’d say “don’t get me started on..” that is exactly what he would
start on. He’d say “don’t get me started on politics” then talk politics or
“don’t get me started on hospitals” then he’d talk about Indians.   I’d
been head locked in his monologue. Listening was a test of restraint and self
control.  His father passed away in a
London hospital seven years ago.  The
hospital was “run by Indian doctors”   who refused his father a heart bypass citing his
condition as not serious enough.   A
month later his father died of a heart attack. 

That’s when he decided to leave the country. In exasperation
he gasps  “ninety percent Indian, the
hospital was”.  In  correlation with  the “good old days of The Empire” with his
comments on “Indian Doctors”  alongside
his view that   “England’s not the same
as it was thirty years ago”  I see  a  weak man
broken not by change but by his inability to accept change.   Change is nature.   To not
accept it is inhumane.  This train of
thought,   track by clickety track, lead  directly 
to auschwitz.   “Don’t get me wrong.”
He says shaking his head from side to side as the plane gulps   down towards
 the runway  “ I’m not a racist.”  I hadn’t said he was “My own children are
half caste.” He passes me his card and I feel my stomach turn as the wheels
skid onto the runway.