The Train to Glasgow(1984) (Time Tunnel # 5)

Our audience with Mr. Fellows wasn’t too bad, he shouted us down for going to the pub at lunchtime, and said that the Head Office were currently working on a policy which would forbid consumption of alcohol during office hours, and added that the ‘Powers That Be’, had even suggested that in years to come there would be a policy forbidding smoking on the office premises. Gaz was reprimanded for laughing at that one, as to be honest in the 1980s, it did not seem workable, as most folk smoked at their desks, in fact smokers smoked everywhere, pubs, discos, shops, restaurants, you name it, they smoked inside it.

As my mum often said ‘we’ll see’!

Once he reprimanded us, his demeanour changed slightly, and he said that the leave applications would be granted, albeit grudgingly, for one day only, next Friday, as the office was busy, and 'we needed the staff'.

Didn’t we always need the staff, being busy wasn’t something new, and the way things were going with so-called progress, we would be busier as the decade moved on.

He signed off our leave applications, in his fancy cursive writing, with a 'fountain pen' and told us to hand them into the  Admin Office, like we didn't know where to put them.

Some bosses really treated you as if you were stupid, talking down to you as if you were a child, I often wondered what the office of the future would be like, would it be like now, in 1984?

Anyway, we left Fellows' office, jeering and running along the corridor.

‘Glasgow, here we come' , I said , in my best imitation on a Glasgow accent, a wee bit like 'Taggart' on the TV police drama .

'Aye, and Dystopia,’ said Gaz.

As I said , Gaz was a big fan of sci-fi books, but the two of us were really getting into watching videos, hired from the shop around the corner from Gaz’s flat. A lot of the 'work folk' were talking about hiring videos at the weekends, and everywhere seemed to have video shops opening up, some people even recorded stuff off the TV. Denise did that. I had enjoyed watching 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' on Denise's parents' video at New Year, with David Bowie singing from 'Scary Monsters and Super Creeps', and  Annie Nightingale introducing Ultravox, and Gary Numan , both of which sounded like music from the next century to me, quite weird, but pretty good.

Gaz rented a video recorder and paid it up monthly , I went to the Granada shop with him one lunchtime, and was thinking of getting a 'VCR' , as they were known, for myself. I would have to get my own place to stay first , away from my folks, then I could start thinking about my future, and buying things like TVs , stereos and VCRs. Hopefully I would be promoted at work by them and have a wee bit more cash to play with!

Gaz and me had recently watched  ‘Alien’,’Blade Runner’, and ‘2001- A Space Odyssey’, which whetted our appetites for what lay ahead in the Time Tunnel , I wondered seriously how things would be in the 2020’s. Would it be as depicted in the aforementioned movies, or maybe something quite different?

We would find out once this train rattled its way down the track , I thought as my mind switched back to poetic rhyme in my mind, maybe I would write poems some day, I liked the idea of writing rhythmically. I had left my new Sony Walkman at home, so no music for me, I had taped a couple of Hawkwind’s recent albums, ‘Church of Hawkwind’ and ‘Choose Your Masques’, so I would have some futuristic music to accompany our trip. My chatting with Gaz on the journey was interrupted several times by the usual noisy cabal of drunken oil workers returning from their latest two week stint offshore. They were, as my dad used to say, ‘in good spirits,’ drinking them rather than being in them. I thought, ah well, maybe things would be better in the future!

I laughed , and began thinking of a poem I had read as a kid, ‘This is the Train to Glasgow’, it was a humorous one, which imitated the rhythm of a train, and I always remember my wee brother reciting it very quickly, with the words ‘Here’s the Driver  Mr McIvor’ becoming ‘Here’s the drive, Mr. McIve’, somehow that had made me laugh, it’s funny the things you remember. The rhythm of it was similar to the poem ‘Night Mail’, which I remembered from school. Poetry was something I actually liked at school, I wasn’t a huge fan of the place. I wondered what school was, or would be like in the future, in the 21^st Century.

 We travelled down to Glasgow unaware of whether  or not the driver’s name was McIvor, but I digress, that’s something I am quite good at, apparently!

A few younger folk listened to music buzzing through portable headphones, clutching their Sony Walkman cassette players in hand. We looked out the window at the houses and fields flying past as the train headed south. The guard dead-panned the litany of destinations before Glasgow, I knew them off by heart as I had travelled to Glasgow for training courses quite a lot the last three years, since my joining ‘The Service.’