The passing of the fish train

I well remember standing with a group of my train-spotting friends down at Loughborough Midland Station, around 1955.

In those days, a much larger variety of freight trains passed by.  Unlike today’s totally enclosed 40 ft containers, vans were mostly of wooden construction.  A few fast ‘fitted freights’ would come hurtling through on the main line, augmented by the normal passenger trains. 

The most notable of these ‘fast freights' was the weekly Grimsby/York fish train, bound for London at 65 mph or more.  This train frequently picked up water - while travelling at speed - from the water trough between the tracks near Meadow Lane Bridge.

Passing through the station only a few seconds later, there was a huge cloud of black smoke, a fine mist of spilling water, the rattling of some thirty fish vans and - oh yes, the smell!

I can never forget the smell of the fish train: iced (melting) fish, locomotive smoke and oil combined with steam. On a still day this smell would linger for at least five minutes.  As for the locomotive, a filthy Black 5 as usual. 

If I knew that this train was to pass by today, would I go to see it?  Yes, I would, and take my grandchildren!

 

David Taylor

The Forest

There is nothing like a forest
to inspire and restore
spirits that are burdened
with love and death and war.
Bright green buds and tiny leaves
welcome back the Spring
and Summer’s cool green canopy
hides birds, we hear them sing.
It gives us shelter from the wind
and from the scorching sun.
When leaves turn red and yellow
we will know that Summer’s done.
Then Autumn brings the mellow mists.
Deep piles of scrunchy leaves.
My favourite time of year
is Autumn, gathering in the sheaves.
The peace and sweet serenity
belie the teeming life
of forests where soft footed deer
and insect sounds are rife.
If, from our world, with all its pain
I need to find respite
I find a forest, take a picnic,
make my world feel right.

Jean Taylor

The Monkey in the Road

It lay in the road, abandoned.

Normally, by now someone would have picked it up, put it on a wall, or taken it to the nearest place with a window, to be reclaimed.

Normally, the child who had lost the toy monkey would have cried, screamed, thrown themselves down on the ground, done whatever it took for Mum to retrace her steps to look for Monkey.

But these were strange times, nobody out in the streets, everyone at home, safe, hiding from the Virus.

I was out and about, posting a letter to my grandson with yet another poem to boost his ego till the schools reopened. As I turned from the post box, I saw the monkey and headed towards it, hoping that there might be a clue as to where it had come from, or to whom it belonged. I picked it up, turned it round and round and spotted the key around its neck. It was a car key, so I guessed it must have been missed unless it was a duplicate.

There was a car park nearby, with around a dozen cars parked, so I strolled over until alarm bells stopped me in my tracks. Mums and Dads don’t usually attach car keys to toys, and children’s toys don’t usually have adult car keys attached to them.

While I was thinking maybe I should go back and leave both monkey and key exactly where I found them, I heard a rumbling behind me and a small voice said “please can you give me back my motorbike key?” When I turned around, a toddler was looking up at me, sat astride a duck on wheels, with a hole in its neck, and a breathless Mum was running towards us. “Sorry,” she gasped, “George said the monkey had run off with his key.”

Speechless, I handed back Monkey, and stood long after they had all gone, wondering if the Virus had turned us all into weirdos.

Jean Taylor
18.3.21

A beacon of entertainment

From the prompt: ‘The Island remained a beacon of non-conformity and a place of refuse for the conventional.’

The tall, tile-clad building in the Coneries was once a cinema called the Odeon. My only experience of it in this guise was the year the Brush held the Christmas party for employee’s children there, the place in its last throws of life as a cinema, I think. 

The 'party' wasn't a party as I'd previously understood them but involved watching a film whilst eating bags of sweets we’d been given, followed by lining up – girls in one aisle, boys in the other – to collect a present from a too-thin, harried-looking Santa or his helper, before exiting the fire-doors into the arms of waiting family. 

I remember snatches of the film we watched – a British Film Foundation number for children about a robbery, which I’ve neither seen nor heard of since – and have a vague awareness of the shabbiness of the auditorium at that time. There were huge holes in the walls beside the staging which I found unsettling, as if some giant mouse was lurking behind them, ready to jump out.

I was an anxious, overly-imaginative little thing, bothered by the lack of adult supervision and hating all the noise. It’s questionable whether the worry it caused me was worth the present I was made -  without the protection of my brother - to queue up for and collect.

Many years later on my fortieth birthday, our neighbours decided to introduce my husband and myself to the joys of bingo – an activity they were obsessive about and took part in every Saturday night. The setting for this was the old Odean – now rechristened Beacon Bingo. Our Formica table in the balcony gave us an excellent view of how the place had changed. No mouseholes now, but all slickness and bright lights, the babble of the players around us muffled by thick carpets in bright primary colours. We were linked up with ‘national,’ like some Eurovision parody, with a big rollover pot of money up for grabs.  It was my birthday and I’d have beginner’s luck, we joked, so I was pretty much guaranteed to win.

Sadly, playing bingo meant total concentration on a game which we – used to busy chatter and continual trips to the bar in our local - found difficult to muster. Despite playing four ‘books’ each themselves, our neighbours prompted us continually, pointing out numbers we’d failed to dab through lack of paying attention. It wasn’t long before they gave up and took the tickets from us, playing them themselves. Neither myself nor the husband could understand their passion.

At half-time, the husband sorted the dryness-in-the-drinks situation by buying us all four pints each, tottering back to the table with a grin and a tray inch-deep in slops mere seconds before the games kicked-off again. The neighbours were incredulous, the bingo tickets soggy and our concentration, fuelled by boredom-gulping alcohol, took another dive downhill.

The night ended – unexpectedly – with a karaoke session in the bar, though empty of bingo-diehards, who’d bussed home in their coaches the minute the caller switched off the mic.  More birthday drinks - the neighbours yawning in the corner - and an ill-advised turn on the karaoke later, we left ‘the Beacon’ ourselves.  My head hurt like hell the next day, as did the lining of my stomach.  Fifteen quid each, those tickets cost us, and not a single win between us all.

To our surprise, the neighbours asked the next week whether we’d like to join them again.  As tactfully as we could, we declined.

AM

A windy night (ii)

At first it was exhilarating, made the hairs on your neck stand up and made you want to pull your collar up and pull your  thermal hat down  over your ears. Then, as you trudged on it made you lean into the oncoming gusts and think about how good it would be coming back with

The wind behind you.

Thankfully, it was not raining. As the bushes and trees bowed in homage to the south-westerly gale, I stuck my hands down deeper into my duffle coat pockets and made a mental list of what might need tying down or securing in place before I went to bed.

Now, the cheering lights of the pub were visible, the metal sign groaning a welcome.  Thoughts of food and drink overtook the plans for safety precautions and I was pleased to find an empty table by the fire, most of the customers chatting at the bar. A bottle of wine and a plate of pie and chips later, I felt replete and mellow and started up a conversation with the locals.  They had all had plenty of experience of windy weather and regaled tales of storms, gales and events which had made headline news in the past.  I listened with interest to accounts of  Barry’s barn which had lost its roof in March 2016, the elderly couple whose chimney had plummeted to the ground, narrowly missing their parked car on the drive, back in 2014, and the man who last year, after drinking his way round the five pubs in the town, had stumbled down the canal path to his houseboat, only to found it gone. He sobered up when, after searching most of the night, the police informed him that it had run aground six miles down the canal.

Did I or didn’t I remember to double knot the mooring rope?

Jean Taylor

A windy night (i)

I never mind a windy night, with one notable exception!

My neighbour has a covered driveway comprising mainly of plastic corrugated sheets.  With luck, the wind is in the South East, and this does not seem to trouble the construction very much.

If, however, the wind is in the North West, I have to expect a sleepless night.  The loose panels on the front jump up and down with every gust, and the whole drive erupts into action.

With scraping, banging and crashing noises, every type of household item starts to take flight.

Dustbins, water containers, children’s toys, large sheets of plywood, old plastic bumpers from long-scrapped cars, and an assorted array of plastic sheeting, all combine in their contribution to this annoying midnight concert.

I just have to lie awake trying to identify any individual object and waiting for it to hit my window. 

Last week it was a large piece of roof sheeting.  I hope that is the piece that jumps up and down!

David Taylor

An island of understanding and a Beacon of unconvention

In early 1980, and for a few years after, Emmanuel Church Loughborough, formed part of a number of Anglican churches in the town. 

Like many other towns up and down the country, the services held in these established churches followed a common and well established pattern.  Early morning Communion, Matin’s at mid morning and Evensong towards the end of the day.

Due mainly to the fact that Loughborough had a large student population, the Emmanuel incumbent decided that his church needed a further, more music-led service at around 7.30 pm.  Martin introduced the fourth service, this new service was to be called Evening Praise.

Attracting mostly young people and a scattering of the more evangelical adults, this service complete with guitar and drums was to be a tremendous success.  Speakers from all around the country, some from different denominations, would come and give their testimonies on many aspects of the Christian faith.  Spiritual gifts frequently featured, with prayer for many types of ailments, mental and physical conditions, and deep seated personal problems.

To the grateful expectation of some and the amazement of others, answered prayer became more than a little apparent.

Questions about what was happening at Emmanuel began to circulate amongst other churches, and soon the expression ‘an Emmanuel Experience’ was coined.   It would not be unfair to say that some of the other churches in Loughborough became a bit dubious about Emmanuel, but I just spent every week looking forward to attending.

It was thanks to the people there that I embarked on a long weekend at a large country house some 30 miles from Loughborough. The speaker was David Webb of the Birmingham Riverside Fellowship.  That is where my whole life changed!

In short, I went there with no great expectations. I was after all, ‘a church-going person.’  An unexpected event during that Saturday afternoon caused me to become a very convinced Christian.  In just four words, THE PENNY HAD DROPPED.

David Taylor