WAITING FOR BRIAN
Sometimes one can find oneself in a situation one neither understands nor wishes to. You may not understand this story, but as long as you understand the situation, that is satisfactory. I am waiting for Brian. It’s a fairly standard platform. On one extreme, scrawny youths cluster around the crumbling sides of the platform, gently kicking bits of concrete off to form a slowly rising mound. On the other, suited men who probably did the same all those years ago, before their mortgages got the better of them, look on with feigned disapproval. I sit in the middle, neither wasted youth nor equally wasted man. Brian and I go way back - how far I can’t remember, but far enough. We’ve done some pretty crazy stuff together; nothing illegal, but not the kind of stuff you want to remember when you’re forty... I’m sure you understand. I do wish Brian would just hurry up. We simply cannot be late. Behind the littered patch of grass in front of me, lanky tower blocks loom over, having risen more quickly than the youths’ concrete mound but with an equal sense of pointlessness and wasted effort. I’m told from the top you can see as far as the City - not that I would climb that tower of shattered glass and aspiration. Behind me lies the suited men’s territory: neatly kept town houses, separated from that other world only by the station - neutral ground where the two mix uneasily. Trains go past and the suited men leave with a final wistful glance, while others get off: cleaners from the early morning shift, and the overnight guards who pretend not to see their truant sons chipping away at their only way out of here, while the sons turn and walk along the side of the track, oblivious to volts and steel. Sometimes I wonder what they get up to and I think to follow them, but then I remember Brian.
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