Four Hours in Glasgow - Part 6

It was raining again when I left the Cathedral. I went around to the back to see the cemetery. It was even foggier in back. I walked along a stone path. I looked up. The cemetery was on a hill. The gravestones slanted towards me, covered in soot and soil. I looked down and saw that it was not a stone path but that I was standing on grave markers embedded in the ground. I jumped back and in my peripheral vision I saw a figure, a dark man, a bum, sleeping in one of the crypts. He looked at me.

Glasgow Necropolis

I left the Cathedral and headed for the train station again. The further I walked, the more unbearable my backpack became. I reached around and fastened the waist-straps at my bellybutton.

I wonder if the support straps on backpacks make them at all easier to carry or if the feeling of being hugged just makes the ordeal more bearable. Either way I made it to the train station and the train to London was waiting with two cars of unreserved seats. I sat down and I listened.

I tried to console myself by blaming my failure on Glasgow—on the weight of my backpack—on the rain. I told myself that I like riding on the train more than being in a place and that I would be better to enjoy the train ride home than to try and spend the night in a city I didn’t like. I wonder if I was right.

In front of me a roughish looking Scottish couple with red hair and leather jackets was speaking caring words to and old lady. They arranged sandwiches and juice boxes on the table in front of here and kept telling her not to worry. The announcement came for “those not intending to travel to leave the train” and the couple stood outside the car and waved and smoked.

And then the train started. Out the window there was grey and grass and sheep and heather. A Scottish conductor checked my Britrail Pass and moved to the young lady across the aisle from me. She appeared to be around seventeen years old and was sitting with a one-year-old baby with silver stud earrings and seven or eight bracelets. The girl tried to pass off a ticket that had already been punched and the conductor spoke to her so sweetly and understandingly yet he still made her pay. As the trip progressed the baby, whom I soon learned was named Nicole, began to wander the train, further and further from her mother. Wherever she crawled it seemed that children would appear wanting to play with her. Among them was a seven-year-old with round glasses and a thick brogue who was increasingly worried that Nicole would ruin his Pokemon game. Nicole’s mother tried desperately to keep her daughter to sit still. She even resorted to having her was the train’s windows with baby wipes. As I watched this young woman from between the headrests she looked to me like a mix of tough and beautiful, caring and suspicious. I felt sorry for her and proud of her. I was fascinated.

Eventually, the clouds dispersed again and the land began to glow in the magic hour. Nicole and her mother disembarked and I watched the sunset and the moon rise from among the sheep to take its place.

A new conversation gradually took my attention. At first, I could only hear the boy. He was yelling stream of consciousness facts in the thick voice of a Scottish Lad. I peered over my seat and understood. It was the Pokemon boy and he was talking to the old lady, he started addressing her as “Gran”.

“Yesterday,” he said, “Yesterday was the Queen’s birthday and she was a hundred.” Gran Nodded and whispered something into his ear. “You’re not! You are not one hundred years old,” he shouted into her hearing aid. She whispered again. “You’re not sixty-three,” he replied.

“The problem with me,” he said. “The only problem with me is that I can’t always finish my work. There’s this boy Jimmy and he keeps me from finishin’.” His vocal tone rose with each sentence.

Eventually, she said something out loud. “The train’s quiet and I can hear ya’ fine.” By then it was dark and as the Scottish grandmother and a grandson whispered to each other I watched the stars speed by listening to the rhythm of the train.

Platform at Euston Station, London

The train at last arrived in London. I got off feeling numb—-not triumphant or defeated. I wedged my way through the crowd and stepped quickly to the end of the platform. I noticed that my shoe was untied and as I kneeled down to tie it I heard a voice.

“Mah!” I heard, then the pat pat pat of a running child. “Mah! Mah!”

In front of me a youngish, motherly looking woman held her hands out.

“Mah!” I heard it one more time before I saw him. The Pokemon boy ran past me and jumped into the arms of his waiting mother. She swung him around and I understood why I had gone to Glasgow.