The End Of The Line - Friday Flash

Dwelling at the end of the line bestowed me a brace of boons. Firstly that I always secured myself a seat, much to the spreading satisfaction of my gluteus maximus. And second, that usually I'm able to wade into my current reading book to good effect.

Now I grant that reading on a train and in public, is not the same as reading in the splendid isolation of home. When one feasts on words, one cannot but help take a mental pause for digestion and paying silent compliment to the literary chef. On a train, when hoisting the eyes up from the page thus, one has no recourse other than to scan the carnival of humanity, which also happens to be in transit between one worldly carousel and another.

Within my little cloister of four seats, there is usually some permutation of persons cutting themselves adrift. Be it through earphones; hiding behind a freesheet newspaper; slumped asleep; women applying make-up gathered into a compact; and innumerable folks predictably having words chiseled for them on their mobile phones and grinning inanely to themselves. Occasionally, just occasionally, I am abutted or adjacent to a fellow bibliophile. My heart cannot but help skip in such circumstance. Our eyes craning to read, not the face, but the title of their book which will enlighten us one to the other, into an instant familiarity.

So imagine my unalloyed delight when today all three other berths were filled by men with volumes held out in front of them, supplicants like myself. My eyes were pinging about in their sockets, unsure quite where to alight first. Etiquette determines that it is unseemly to swivel your head to the left towards the man seated beside you, so I was faced with the two diametric, either of whom could be engaged with minimal canting.

I plumped for the man directly opposite me. I snaked my eyes above the paper periphery of my book. To be confronted directly by his, staring straight at me, with his book lowered into his lap. In point of fact he was staring straight through me. As if he was trying to burn through to the Virgin Trains' logoed antimacassar behind my head.

I saw that his lips were moving. Possibly a student reeling off his rote learning for the ordeal of a test. Though he seemed a touch on the old side for a student, even an eternal one. Also the rhythm of his recitation seemed to be so rapid as to preclude an itemisation of facts.

People who read not only moving their lips, but actually vocalising their words had always struck me as rather limited readers, yet this chap was belting through his text of choice with compelling fluency. Though cupped in his lap, he wasn't actually reading it per se, unless it was written in braille...

I ducked my eyes down to squint at his print. It wasn't pointillist, but neither could I apprehend its alphabet. Of course, this man was praying! Intoning words not only taken into his heart, but inscribed there.

Does one have to be reading a text for the first time in order to fulfil the prerequisite to be a member of our impromptu book club? He wasn't even strictly reading his damned book anyway! I'm not sure therefore we could count him as a fellow traveller through the printed word. Our full house might just have become a busted flush. Oh sweet fraternity, I had imagined today to be so very special, what with these portents lined up this way.

Still, that left two other kindred souls. I veered my glance slightly to the left. The features were partially obscured behind the cover of his book, but I could deduce that he wore spectacles. Time to see what was being reflected in his lenses.

"Sociolinguistics". Well now, I knew what 'linguistics' meant and I had a fair idea what 'socio' presaged in the main, but I'll own putting the two together left me floundering a tad. Patently an academic text of sorts. To wring all the life out of language and literature no doubt. The burst blood vessels in his hand seemed quite appropriate somehow.

Then he lowered his book and I chanced look at his face, but only saw myself dimly outlined in his reflectors. Clearly he wasn't looking through the glass and seeing me. His eyes never left his text as they dipped downwards. Socio-gymnastics, seeing as his hand was fumbling in the pocket of his corduroy jacket. It resurfaced, brandishing a dayglo fluorescent pen.

Still adhered to his reading, he inserted the pen between his lips and levered the lid off with his one free hand. And then the great desecration descended as he proceeded to underline , or possibly block-fill sections of the page. This man had no respect for the holy sacrament of print. I drummed him straight out of our honorary members club and in my mind sliced off his corduroy shoulder pads with - no, no I am a man moved by things of the mind, not violence.

As to the third, well I will not even bring myself to utter.... It had pictures in it. An art book of some kind ? No lush plates of photographic reproductions, but line drawings if you please. Of a man, with a beard and a woman. And this bookworm too was imbibing the text with his vermicular tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth. But it wasn't any sounds it was keeping time with...

Oh woe to be compartmentalised with a breviary, one textbook and singular manual. Fickle fate has mocked me with a mirage of monographs.

As the train pulled in towards the buffers, it was then that I realised I hadn't even progressed to the end of even a single line in my own book. Today, I couldn't even call myself a reader.