Alarm: Penalty for Improper Use

Alarm: Penalty for Improper Use

I made the train by 1 second. I was too out of breath to think about old films when people  actually opened doors on trains already moving.  

Under the improved new timetable this service only runs every three hours now. I was lucky to be aboard. Three hours in this town is about three hours too long.

Luck isn’t something I spend much time on. You can’t in my job. To use a military quote Napoleon asked of his generals ‘ is he lucky?’

The train was packed,  if I was a man for clichés I’d have used a sentence with sardines in it. My usual practice with trains was to walk the length of the train outside along the platform and try for a two  seater in Coach B at the front.

Here I was at the back, but of course seconds later I’d be so far back I wouldn’t be on it.

There were bags everywhere, above , below, gangways impassable. It was a 2 hour  journey. Luckily I had perfected the art of sleeping anywhere, anytime, the most precious asset in my job which involved hours , days of waiting and a nanosecond of action.

I lay across two rucksacks in the connecting corridor. At first I thought nothing of the alarm clock I heard ticking away. It was all rather homely until I realised I was still awake and the clock, one of those old fashioned types with exaggerated bell and hammer, was attached to the outside pocket of the rucksack by two wires, one red, one green.

The C O had said come on the next available train, intelligence reports indicated a bomb was timed to go off in a station two hours from now. I wasn’t sure if I was lucky to be on the train or not, lucky for who, fortunate my habit of sleeping anywhere doesn’t  require alarm calls to wake me and if a 50% chance of cutting the right wire was better than the usual odds.  At least there was no way  I could be court martialled for sleeping on the job.