I love stations and trains. Arrivals and departures. Smooth running. Away. Free from trouble in a travel bubble.
For the next two hours I know my place in the world. I am the passenger (as Iggy loves to say) in Coach A, Seat 73A. I have a right to be here. I know my place. I will keep still and quiet and read my book like a good quiet coach passenger should. And I will not think about the end of days. And I will not try to understand why even the cleverest economists do not understand, or perhaps choose not to understand, the economic situation.
Because for the next two hours life is simple. I have a reservation. I bought a ticket. I have it in my pocket to show to the ticket inspector or, as he is now called, the Train Manager, though he does not manage the train, he looks at the tickets and makes announcements in clipped, strange, truncated words that nobody can understand.
Pls b shr y tk all yr prsnl blngngs wt u wh u lv the tain.
But at least we know where we are (somewhere between Didcot and Chippenham). There is no need to panic. There is no need to think about the end of day and the economic crisis that is supposed to be worse than the Great Depression, though it still feels OK, it still feels like people can cope, and buy the occasional beer or seventeen. Although there are no cloth-capped chavs wheeling wheelbarrows full of notes to the local Curry’s Digital to exchange for a flat screen LCD hi def TV, or even a loaf of bread. Though there is no great dust bowl swirling through the Potteries and the East Midlands.
But I still don’t understand why quantitative easing doesn’t mean that everybody in the country gets an envelope sent to them stuffed with £1450 in £50 notes with a note saying – here you go – some cash to ease things. Use it or lose it. Love – the governor of the Bank of England.
No, you know where you are on a train. Tkts Pls.