The station

It's 1976 or maybe 1977, and it's sometime in July. It's a Wednesday afternoon and it's blisteringly hot, the middle of a heatwave. I'm on my way home from school, standing on the platform at the station, waiting for the train and I'm overcome with a sense of ennui, for want of a better word. This is such a vivid memory that it's almost surreal - the colours are so bright, the light has a clarity that is almost painful. Dust hangs motionless on the air, sparkling in the crystal sunlight, and I can taste that dust in my mouth still.

The trains were old - probably dating back to the 1930's - with sagging upholstery and a smell of burned insulation. Whenever you sat down, the faded seats sent up a cloud of dust that hung in the air for a lifetime. That same dust was everywhere, even outdoors in the station that day, and the smell of burned insulation with it.

I stood at the very end of the platform, almost under the road bridge, at the end the train approached from. The rails started to sing as the train approached, still invisible round the slight bend, then took on the peculiarly characteristic hissing as the pick-up touched the section of live rail that ran through the station. Almost immediately, the yellow, squat cab of the train appeared, leaning slightly to one side as it followed the curve into the station. It was maybe a hundred yards away, still running quite fast.

I stood at the edge of the platform, feet on the white line that marked the boundary; the drop. The sunlight flashed off the windows of the cab as it approached. The world slowed as it approached a cusp, everything focused in that instant. Poised on one foot. A step forward, or a step back. It really made no difference at all.

A moment of infinite time passed and the world turned onto a new course. A step wasn't taken, but the option had been there, had been real. More real than anything in the world for that instant in time. The train slowed and stopped, and I got on. The memory of that instant goes with me like a halo of warmth, of glaring, powerful reality. I cling to the feeling, drawing endless comfort from it because it makes me feel infinitely alive.