Craig Brown
WHENEVER something awful happens to me abroad, I feel a little distant from it and even amused by it, as if I am an actor playing Widow Twankey in a provincial pantomime, knowing all the while that I can wipe the custard from my face when I get home. But travelling in England it is difficult to separate yourself from the horrible experience you are undergoing.
When I was a drama student in Bristol I would regularly take a 125 train from Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads armed with a bottle of wine, a packet of cigarettes and a book. Apart from its other qualities, a full bottle of wine open in front of you usually acts as an effective deterrent against other passengers sitting too close. (Another method is to lean out of the window and beckon them in.) On this occasion, the train had already set off, my first glass was poured, there was
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no one at my table, my book was good and I was puffing away contentedly when sud- denly: 'Great minds, eh?' A beaming, rather small, smartly dressed man plonked his half-bottle of Scotch on the table and took the seat opposite me.
I looked up, gave him the briefest half-smile and carried on with my book. `Reading, are you? A book, is it? May I ask what? Ooh, don't know him. Wilbur Smith I do know. Ever read Wilbur Smith? Great stuff! I'll tell you the one to read — tsss, tip of my tongue, what is it called, The something Inheritance, wasn't it? It'll come, it'll come.'
As he went bumbling on with such joviality, I maintained my distance, just saying yes or no in the appropriate gaps and then only when strictly necessary. `Usually get this train, do you?' came one of his questions. I pretended not to have heard. 'Usually get this train, do you?' he repeated. 'No', I replied. `So you get the 14.16 or the 13.12 then?' he said. 'I am not too good at the 24-hour clock, actually,' I said, thinking that such ignorance might shut him him up. Quite the opposite. 'Simple,' he exclaimed de- lightedly. 'Any number over twelve you just take away twelve.' Ah,' I said, still looking at my book. There was a pause, and then he said: '18.09. Come on, what's 18.09?"Enn . . erm,' I said. 'Take away twelve and what do you have — 6.09! Easy, eh? Here's another — 13.57!'
So began a lesson in the 24-hour clock which lasted all the way to Bath. Around Didcot, he leaned across the aisle and invited three Japanese students to set me some questions: 'Come on, you throw him some.' The awful numbers whirred around the carriage . . . 16.24 . . . 23.05 . . . 11.09 • • • (`Hahaha! trick question! 11.09 is 11.09'). Abroad, this might have seemed a charming illustration of native friendliness, but on a 125 train lurching through Didcot I felt as miserable as can be.
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