Train Of Thought

Vacancy

I’ve turned my phone off. Alerts and alarms; the constant calls to action. I’ve had enough.

The rosebay willow herb whispers sweetness to the silent nettles. Weed killer has strengthened their roots whilst the softer docks have died away. The breeze, enough to stir the tops of the trees funnels through the footbridge. Paint over paint, institutionalised colours of successive generations, each equally convinced of having it right. Beneath me the railway line is empty and the signal on the horizon red. The track is a perfect melodramatic run into the distance. Standing here, like this, I should wear an old fashioned dress, knee length and constraining, something white. A damsel in distress would be easier to save.

Here the valley is shallow, scoured; not the careful green of the tourist maintained Dales to the north nor a farmer’s green of crops. This is the green of decay and neglect. Pastures, flood plains, set aside by the primitive thinking of modern day economics. A piebald horse, distant granddaughter of pit ponies picks her way along the canal bank. The unused landscape is a developer’s fight, a battle to cash in on something he paid nothing for whilst the country turned a dark eye to the miners’ strike and kids went to school to be fed.

Someone sent the police round. Last night, we can’t say which neighbours made the call. They were concerned for my safety, had heard raised voices. Interfering bastards. Told them we’d been rehearsing. I’m happy they wrongly thought of theatre. There’s been so much to do to get to this point.

My first kiss was here. I’d watched him for weeks; his careful hands and the way he laughed. His mouth was warmer and softer than I’d imagined people could be. A dreamer. And like me he was one of the first to leave. It’s too long ago.

The skinny boys used to throw ropes over the gas main that crosses the canal and then the river. Young men that drowned, then or later, whose names got lost, snared on what cannot be seen. This canal’s still not for tourists; made full industrial width, full load, carrying coal, to the power station, now flattened. Our only memory of it the shared drama of the cooling towers’ collapse. The fear of dying from asbestosis whilst men scrabbled for work and politicians flung words.

The river with the ferry that a man hauled. Only one post remains and some old photographs, rescued from a pub that shut; now executive flats, commuting distance to the city. There’s so little rage against the machine now. The half arsed, half smashed arguments we had as teens as to how to put the world to rights. We were thrown out of the playground for being too loud and too drunk.

My hands are cramped with gripping the bridge and as my phone flicks back to life the signal from the station remains red. I can still get to the station before the train comes. My dreamer’s back from Rome and has confirmed the time of the demonstration.
We’ve predicted numbers of over three thousand, not bad for a small city. It’s time to answer the call to action.

Now we say this far and no further.