The train now standing

At the tender age of six years I found myself hurled into the adventure of a lifetime. A holiday to the capital of all England. London. One week's escape from the surroundings of back to back houses and the grime of an industrialised North. I was transported on a journey that was to introduce me to the exciting world of travel.

Platform one. Not certain what to do, my father fidgets with our saved for, second class tickets, while mother, embarrassed by his indecision repeatedly states the obvious. Surrounded by suitcases and humiliation I could only watch, a victim of working class inexperience.

Newcastle to Kings Cross. An overnight sleeper and eight hours that were to change my life forever. Cocooned in second class luxury, my mother kissed me good night. The muffled coughs of strangers and the movement of restless travellers filled me with puerile insecurities, and the yearning for familiar things.

The hiss of steam and the cries of distant voices alerted me to the fact that the train had stopped. I dared to pull back the blind. We had not arrived at journeys end, nor halted in some picturesque siding as my youthful innocence would have me believe. We had come to rest at a station, dark, dank and long since abandoned.

Why had we stopped in such a place? My mind ran wild with notions of terror at what malevolence lurked beyond the fragile glass. From the comfort of my pillow, I watched as litter chased across the remnants of a deserted platform. Through the half-light of a disused waiting room, lost souls stared at me, and "the train now standing".

The fear was real. It was a night that would live with me forever. Whatever the reason for that unscheduled stop, I was never to know. Wherever the location of that disused station, I was never to find out. The only fact to emerge from that dark and distant night. It was the very last time I would see my mother and father.