Disgressed

There is a developing table cloth tradition in our house, and you can see the latest example on the right here.  I no longer remember exactly when this started, but it was probably seven or eight years ago. For some reason we had a paper table cloth on, and one member of the family was away (I think it was Katharine, but I can’t be sure now). Rather than throw out the used paper cloth, we decided to decorate it with a ‘Welcome Home’ message for her. Subsequently, each time one of us was away we would get a paper cloth and do the same.

The tradition gradually fell into disuse, but recently Elizabeth insisted we should revive it for Sarah’s return from a school trip. Now we have the new departure of a Father’s Day table cloth (very nice too) – so the tradition seems to have returned with newly enhanced vigour. I notice that the iconography is also developing: whereas early cloths featured a large message and a mainly floral decorative design, there is a definite trend towards portraiture and narrative elements, especially noticeable in this latest version. I was reading a book the other day which has a brief argument between a Byzantine and a Norman as to whether the introduction of stories into mosaic church decoration represented a relapse into unsophisticated fabulation or the welcome expression of a developing native gift for narrative.

I like the table cloth, anyway.

The train was fairly full the other day, and I counted myself pretty lucky to have got one of the prime spots standing leaning against the partition right next to the door. These are the best places to be when you’re standing: you’ve got something to lean against and because you’re not really blocking the door, you don’t have to struggle to get out of anyone’s way (When I have to squeeze up to let someone pass I always seem to end up shoving my bottom into the face of some guiltless elderly lady sitting on the adjacent seat. Strangely, when I’ve been sitting down, I never remember having a guiltless old lady’s bottom shoved in my face. I wonder what their secret is?) or ‘move down’ when someone refuses to accept that the train is full.

A man somewhat older than myself had secured the opposite position; smartly but not aggressively dressed, balding and mustachioed. He seemed preoccupied. At the first station, a new passenger in a worn grey jacket edged past him, and the elderly man let out a groan as though the new arrival has stood on his foot or thumped him in the chest. Neither of those events seemed in fact to have taken place, and the man in the worn jacket looked sharply at the elderly man before edging forward again and into the train.

Two stations later, the same thing happened again as a studentish young man was getting on: a definite cry of pain. The student clearly resented this just as much as the earlier passenger had done, and he appeared to be on the brink of asking what his problem was when the elderly man let out another louder moan and added:

“I’ve got to get off!”

I thought we must be dealing with claustrophobia, which I have seen a few times, though on trains stopped for an extended period in the middle of nowhere, rather than ones where the doors were still open. But that wasn’t it: the elderly man made awkwardly for the door and promptly fell over on the platform (with a nice rolling motion which saved him from any injury so far as I could see): it became evident that he wasn’t getting up again any time soon.

Was he having a heart attack? Someone had to do something, although whoever got off was going to miss this last train along this particular route (it wasn’t that late in the day but it was the end of the official rush hour). After no more than two seconds’ hesitation the student stepped back off, and I like to think I was probably just behind him when the elderly man pulled himself up on his elbow and said

“Don’t get off. Don’t get off. I just…”

With relief the student got back on and the doors closed.

“He was just a drunk after all.” said the student, smiling broadly, “I thought… But he was fine.”

Fine in the sense of not actually dying, maybe. Fine in the sense of being stuck with slightly ripped trousers on a dirty platform on a station you didn’t want to go to, unsure whether you could or should attempt to stand up (what with the electrified track being only a short stagger and a quick drop away), having missed the last train which would take you home without a long and complex multiple-stage journey.
I expect he was OK, though.