This is part of urban life. Sometimes delays are due to signal failure. Occasionally it's a person ending. There are about fifty a year.
The announcement is made at every station for the benefit of passengers who have just boarded to explain the snail's progress we are making down the track.
Most people take on a look of sympathy and mild horror. Then after a few minutes of waiting, sadness is swallowed up in impatience.
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| Shadows of this life. |
A cowardly part of me wishes that I could do this too: forget about death given enough vitamin D and ease.
A person has gone under the train at Euston: that concrete tomb in perpetual motion. Where young people have arrived for decades seeking fortune and ruin in the smoke. Steel track and the dust of dreams trod on lightly by blackened mice.
I wish the train driver would name him.
In 2007 a little boy called Peter Connelly was beaten to death by his stepfather. The newspapers didn't name Peter for 'legal reasons'. Peter became known simply as 'Baby P'. This really bothered me because all that remains of the dead are their names. It seems sacrilegious not to name them.
The sound of a name doesn't matter much, be it Harper Seven or Bog Standard Pete. A name matters because it is the first thing you are given, and the last thing you'll ever have.
A person has gone under the train at Euston. My train driver doesn't know his name. Neither does the poor guy who hit him.
I'm guessing he was a he. Perhaps he was a she. Maybe it was an accident. Who knows? Either way, I wish I had the name.
