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This week, I’ve been serialising the lead story in my travelogue, Racing Trains, in the lead up to an exciting announcement tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s the full micros-story.

Racing Trains

Have you seen him? Have you seen the Racing Man?

Looking out of the train window a lone figure chases over brambles, roots and concrete inertia alongside the rail track but the train eventually outpaces him stride for stride. But still he races, hopping, bounding, stumbling, throwing himself forward, reaching out to grab the doors, the woodwork or something else, invisible to us commuters in the train but visible to himself, the man who races trains. He races every morning, never from a standing start, but he’s always there as we take the wide curve out to East Midlands Parkway, racing long the path next to the lake, coursing through the water, sometimes running along its surface, always catching up, sometimes in line with us seated commuters, sometimes if we slow down on that arc, getting ahead of us.  We’re too far away to see the look on his face but you’d be sure he is staring in delight as he races by us, water splashing, trails leaving ripples marking where he’s been.

And when I say ‘racing’ I mean racing: not ambling, jogging or sprinting. I mean really racing at full pelt. On a good stretch racing man keeps up with the train and must be doing at least 90mph. This is no Usain Bolt at work. Racing Man is a true one off, a force of nature that no-one I’ve met can yet explain. You can’t be sure of his age; the Lycra gives nothing away and his pace, likewise. His frame is slight but muscular and toned. But the track suit hides everything else. Sometimes he waves at us as we speed away but he doesn’t slow down but just banks off to the left, racing towards the distant woods.

The Racing Man running against the trains. Who else sees him? I’m never sure because no-one comments on him, no-one smiles at me in recognition when I look back to the carriage. This morning though was different. I looked away from the Racing Man and saw a woman look at me at the same time. We smiled briefly at each other but then both looked back outside. Looking for the Racing Man disappearing into the woods. Well, I was. I’m not sure what she was looking at. The next moment we’re into a railway tunnel and the Racing Man will not be seen until tomorrow.

Fly away home!

“He’ll be an athlete in training,” whispered one passenger to her neighbour as they glanced out of the train window this morning.

I couldn’t see why she came to that conclusion: today the Racing Man was running as sprightly as usual, but not with the traditional use of his arms that runners have. Instead of that pumping arm movement which opens the chest, Racing Man was treating his arms as if they were aeroplane wings, transmuting himself in the process into a high-speed jet which was flying over the reed ponds and rivulets which fed the lake. Whether he was on a bombing mission or just intending to terrify the wildlife I couldn’t say: but I could understand why my fellow commuter thought that here was an athlete in training, even if his arms weren’t following the traditional training motions. As he continued to flail around the lake, his splashing and thrashing causing havoc in those early morning swan nests, he reminded me of that old joke. 

Q:        Why do aeroplanes leave smoke trails in the sky? 

A:         To help the pilot find his way home.

Rather than being a matter of training, Racing Man was clearly trying to get home the quickest way possible. Whilst he hadn’t yet mastered the art of beating the train on foot, perhaps today he thought would have more success trying to fly home instead.

The Lions of Nottingham

“Looks like he’s being chased by a bloody great lion,” said an old Yorkshireman as he gazed out of the window, back up the rail track at Racing Man this morning. And he was right. He had that comic book look about his running today; knees up high, head turned around looking fearfully behind him, his breathing obviously heavy and laboured judging by the breath clouds he was pumping out, locomotive like, high above him into the early morning frosty air. All that was needed was a few sound bubbles above him which read ‘whew’ or ‘zoom’ or ‘whoosh’ for the effect of a man being chased by a lion to be completed. Quite why a lion may have been let loose on the scrubland near East Midlands Parkway that Racing Man enjoys his habitual run on is anybody’s guess and old Yorkshireman wasn’t volunteering any reasons for that unlikely phenomenon. But it’s true, there could well have been a lion on the rampage down by the rail tracks this morning, judging by the urgency of Racing Man’s efforts.

I settled back into the seat, turned my head from the carnage that was about to take place trackside, and looked forward up the line towards the approaching eight cooling towers of the power station. I never liked looking back up the line as it only reminded you of where you had been, lions and all. Much better to be facing forward, anticipating a new future around the bend. I’m sure Racing Man will have felt the same, particularly today.

Now you see him, now you don’t

This morning I tried to figure out where the Racing Man starts racing the trains. Until now, I’ve only really seen him by mistake when I’ve glanced out of the train window and inadvertently spotted him sprinting along, trackside, full of intent for one thing or another. Whether it’s scaring ducks, being chased by lions or just expressing the joys of spring I don’t know, but whatever the reason for doing it, one thing you can say is that it’s racing with intent.  So today I thought I would join his intentful mission and look out for him with a purposeful gaze. The journey out of Nottingham started uneventfully enough apart from a cluster of police cars gathered around the canal as we slowly meandered out of the city. What might that mean? I wondered. Any correlation with the absence so far of Racing Man? The scrap tip at Beeston, the Boots factory, swathes of industrial land earmarked for some kind of logistics centre, and then out past the reed beds at Attenborough. This is where I have usually caught sight of him but not this morning. It struck me that perhaps spotting him might be related to something akin to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle: the harder you look, the less likely you are to spot him.

So, by the time we got to East Midlands Parkway, I took the Saturday evening news advice prior to announcing the football scores and ‘looked away now,’ whilst trying to use my peripheral vision to spot him. Before too long, my head turned outwards to follow the oilseed fields laying their paths to Loughborough. All that yellow can’t be good for a balanced country ecosystem I mused until the children next to me startled me with a “Look mummy, look at that funny man, what’s he doing?”

And sure enough, there was Racing Man on the opposite side of the train from usual, racing in the opposite direction, Nottingham bound, and clearly racing with the full level of intent he’d shown previously. Thank goodness for that I thought. He may be related to Heisenberg but at least he’s got the decency to show up when you least expect him. I settled back for the rest of the journey, pleased to see that he was apparently unscarred by his episode with the lions of Nottingham. The working week could begin.

The Flying Scotsman.

I think I’ve figured out how the Racing Man manages to race the trains so hard in this part of the world. This morning, we were speeding along to Leicester as usual away from the Parkway and before I knew it, there he was, racing up the inside of the track getting closer and closer. It was enthralling, and I wondered whether he risked falling under the wheels of the speeding loco, but no, he dotted and darted, up and around, and my goodness, there he was, right up to the carriage windows, looking in, searching for someone or something. For a split second he came right up to my window, and I gasped when I saw him and realised: he’s flying, he’s not running, he’s flying! He must have had – I don’t know – six, ten, a dozen – pairs of ultra-thin, gauze wings which were whirring at an incredible rate, so fast you couldn’t see them unless the sun caught them. 

Racing Man wasn’t just a Running Man but a Flying Man, a force of nature. And before I could say anything to anyone in the carriage, he’d peeled away from the train, still racing, beating the train into second place as we rushed through Loughborough station.

Bloody East Midlands Trains.

Our Inter-city 125 (or as fast as it can manage) shook us all up this morning as it started its daily challenge with the Racing Man. We raced each other through the dumbstruck countryside as usual with commuters squeezed in around me, stood stock rigid, fit to pop, all looking for somewhere to park, somewhere to rest our weary backs, somewhere to relieve our knees but tempers were fraying and we couldn’t wait much longer. Racing Man breezes alongside, oblivious to the internal distress. I saw a pair of seats a few rows down, one of which was occupied by a teenage lad in a track suit and a bobble hat, the other had a sports bag on it with some kind of nondescript logo emblazoned across it.  The way he had his leg sprawled over it suggested it was his. But the seat wasn’t, so I squeezed past the mute sardines beside me and clawed my way up to the seat and asked him ever so ever so ever so politely whether the seat was free when it clearly wasn’t, as it was occupied by his shabby nondescript bag, and whether he minded moving it.

You know what’s coming, don’t you? He says nothing, I ask louder, he feigns dozing, I go to move the bag, he sits up straight, fierce, defending his territory, he pulls a small knife, I stare at him incredulous then pull out my own and before you know it we’ve got blood smeared on our faces, there’s blood on the window, there’s blood on his bobble hat, we’re facing up to each other, he’s shouting, I’m trying to stay polite but there’s no persuading him to reason with me and move his sports bag. So, I push him back in his seat, and he slumps with a silly astonished look in his eyes. I bet he never thought his day would finish like this when he woke up this morning. I move his bag and settle back for the rest of the journey.  

Bloody East Midlands Trains. Never enough seats when you want one. I look out of the window and Racing Man is perched on top of one of the Parkway cooling towers, wings fluttering. God knows how he got up there. God knows who he’ll follow next. God knows I won’t be seeing him for a long time.