Very early morning; barely not evening.
Tuesday 13th. 00.32 to be exact.
Down the road in front of the station, a vehicle pulled up, turned round and immediately departed.
"Was that the Ch____ bus?" said one.
"Hope not," said the second.
"Just came and went."
And it had.
"I'll go and see if I can find someone. If it comes, tell 'em to wait. Yeah?" said the second.
"Sure," said the first.
And so the second went to find someone - and he, actually, did.
"But where were you?" the rail worker asked them both.
"Up there, waiting to come down," said the first.
"Ah. Well you see ... normally it's the bus-stop down here where they stop."
"Yeah," said the second, "but I saw a big bus drive all the way up earlier -"
"OK. OK," interrupted the rail worker. "I'll ring up the A_____ Control Room and see where it is."
"OK. Thanks," said the first.
"Yeah. Thanks," said the other.
And so it was they waited.
Confusion, right? Though you can't show too much ...
That's when one of the two looked up into the corner of the bus-shelter, and saw the half-ball of CCTV camera balefully peering down at them. He wondered if anyone - or indeed anything - was bothering to peer through it, and back.
Why, he asked himself, was CCTV used only to lamely pursue, register & archive - why couldn't it also be used to productively support & help out?
In cases just like these, he meant ...
In cases of a night train, stopping an hour from its destination.
A connecting bus, failing to connect with its two passengers.
A major railway station, empty of most of its staff - just a waiting passenger or three to be seen: here, a pinched face peering at touchscreen; there, crouched young women & their beer in the air; elsewhere, other mobile devices being tapped unaccountably.
In some place, for sure, cleaning staff and time-saving tricks of ingenuity; on the departures board meantime, a train to an airport, to an ancient city, to somewhere more distant (and really rather nondescript).
Support clearly waiting out there - but mostly blurry, mostly unclear.
So the matter was shortly sorted. The rail worker, returning from agile juggle between walkie-talkie, Blackberry keyboard & patient customers (or custom patients!), provided an update.
A solution would be found; a taxi would be called; the journey would be made; the evening would be fixed.
Fixed as in "repaired", that is.
Not as in ... "confidence trick"!
Not a last word, however. Two sheep instead - or maybe just one, after all.
A madcap taxi-journey back; a conversation of many ideas; and curiously affirming thoughts, too. Maybe too affirming. Maybe only there to give the impression of affirmation.
A flash of speed camera caught the moment of arrival on hard-drive.
An exchange of names reminded one of the two to phone home to a third.
A singing of cargo train reminded of further sci-fi classic.
The steps up back home - eventually, finally, gratefully trod.
