Jun 18, 2009
On the tube to Heathrow
Father is reading a battered HP Lovecraft. His hems hitch up to mid calf when he sits down, exposing an inch of pallid flesh between black sock and trouserleg. He forages in his hand luggage and extracts a pair of expensive sound-cancelling headphones from the depths. Snapping them over his ears so the soft pads flatten the white whiskers of his beard, he announces to his travelling companions: “excuse me while I disappear into sonic isolation.”
They roll their eyes at each other, as if this is the kind of thing he does all the time.
Daughter is dressed for work, and reading the inflight magazine for Andromeda Spaceways. Her neat work bag and casual shoes contrast with her parents, who are kitted out for a journey. She is in commute mode: unmoveable, unflappable, undisturbable.
Mother is a rummager. She ferrets in the big blue bag for a while, then (having retrieved a pen), hands it to father across the aisle. He grumps from within his cone of silence and bundles it on his knee, balancing the rear weight of it on his leather bumbag. She continues fossicking deep within the black bag with the corporate travel luggage tag. Whatever she’s looking for, it’s in there somewhere.
For two stops she roots about in the overstuffed knapsack, feeling her way for the prize.
Glancing around the carriage distractedly, father’s eyes light on her quizzical rummaging and offer an eyebrow of help. She shakes her head and switches hand.
Just….maybe…..aha! From the bowels of the bag, she draws a tatty lime green exercise book, complete with a printed table of mathematical and computing functions on the back cover. Then she has a micro-rummage for the pen again, before using it to make a note in the book. Then book is slid back into the coccoon of the black bag, and she taps father on the knee and beckons for the blue bag again. Pen is returned to the depths of the blue, and all is calm.
Distracted from HP Lovecraft, father glances to check the safety of the suitcases, then fingers flit to breast pocket of his crisp white shirt to feel for the tickets, check that they are where they should be.
They are safe. Their journey is under way. The train rumbles them towards departures.
eh? Is this the first chapter from a book that you are writting?
No, it’s a little slice of life I observed on the Tube last night.
I do this occasionally:
H&C line, Morning
Scenes from a commute
Putting on
Three tube sketches
So descriptive. I can picture the scene now. Lovely.