Carrying bituminous coals to Newcastle

This is one of those stories that somebody on social media will shout at me and say it didn’t happen. Well, it did. When I moved down south, I didn’t have a car, didn’t even drive. So, I used to jump on a train every few weeks to visit my parents who were still living in my hometown. It was a three-hop journey: Cambridge to Peterborough, Peterborough to Newcastle, and then a Metro ride to the family semi-detached pile. I always took a rucksack. The one that I’d taken around Europe Inter-Railling, the one I’d worked around the US with, same one that I’d tour Australia a year later with the ultimately-to-be Mrs Sciencebase, and then again backpacking in Botswana and Zimbabwe back in the early ’90s. I’ve still got the rucksack. It is fairly spacious, looks very battered these days, but wasn’t quite so battered the time I was pulling it out from the luggage storage area on an Intercity 125 as we pulled into Newcastle on one of the aforementioned trips back to the homestead. As I was manhandling my luggage, the train was slowing quickly. An elderly American gent who had been sitting with his wife and another American couple in their requisite pastel-shaded polyester slacks, shirts, and blousons, as well as attendant golfing type hats offered to help. “No, it’s fine, thanks, I can manage, I responded,” struggling to get the bulging back full of what was basically a laundry todo incarnate for my mother. He turne...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs