1935

Passing faces from the departing train. Windows moving sideways and faster as the vehicle gathers momentum and rushes off down the tunnel to the next station. Moving around me are the faces of the lucky, and the saved, and the alighted. Those faces they have just kissed will never be seen again. Cases and fingers and feet and umbrellas and personal stereos and mobile telephones and loud chatter with no one near you.

‘I put my faith in the system and the system let me down’.

‘Fuck him. I have to tell her one way or another tonight or else there is no point in us talking at all now…’

‘Where in the line of sanity did you ever think you could wear those shoes with that top?’

‘Colin couldn’t read a line of code if you cribbed it for him…’

‘…so she walked in the room and just about died when she saw who was sitting in there…’

‘Hello? Can I book a table for this evening? The name for the booking is D-E-A-S-L-E-Y.’

‘I haven’t seen her for years now. Was it her husband who visited me that time?’

Fifty yards away unwitting souls are entering the great darkness. There is a report like a cannon going off, echoed by the distance and the brickwork. After the expectant pause there are screams all around me and stampeding and shouting and panic. I have changed it all.

But it’s those little pauses for which I live, those little moments that show you what it’s like to really be alive.