Waiting for the 4:50

I guess that the next paragraph no longer applies to a large percentage of post-Y2k-born youth, because of the type of education being delivered nowadays, but in my day things were totally different.

Whilst such differences are numerous and diverse, I am particularly referring to the aspect of human development in which mainly one’s parents, but also other elders, teachers and clergy may have guided us. Such as how to behave as a teenager adolescent, how to act as a twenty-somethinger, a thirty-somethings, a middle-ager and then an advanced-ager.

I suspect that I lack most of these, hence my hesitance in being able to judge whether I am “normal” or simply untrained. In particular, my emotions.

What specifically has caused me to reflect on emotions, particularly the teary-eyed type, which traditionally was reserved for the ladies?

An advert photo in my inbox caught my eye this morning, and did it.

In October 2002, a little more than a year after 9/11, we considered the air-lanes safe enough once more, and I found myself on Paddington station a few times. I can still remember the time spent there, including the orchestral performance by a large group of musicians late one afternoon.

My travelogue, A Walk In The Park, records:

“…29 Exploring Paddington.Plate 45 shows Paddington Station from Praed Street, an unassuming and narrow gated entrance at the top of steep stairs. The downramp road on the left leads to the GWR railway station and the departure point for the Heathrow Express, while the small entrance on the right goes down to the Underground station. London Road is on the extreme right. Royal Mail vans and trucks are constantly going down there to some kind of sorting warehouse in the red-brown brick building. If you go right into London Road and past the Royal Mail building, around the domed station towards the crane visible in the sky, then you’re on your way to Little Venice canal landing stage…”

I still get a lump in my throat when I look at the pictures. Can this be normal? After all, it is simply a railway station, like so many others…

I still don’t know whether my feelings are normal, or whether I am simply an ungrown-up softie.