iPods. iPod Touches. I touch iPods. PDAs, Macbooks and DS-es - a baffling array of abbreviations and bastardizations, of bastard abbreviations - these are the names of and the ways that we while away the miles and the hours, sleeper after sleeper, station after station. We, the passengers on the East Coast Line, immersed in our gadgets and our virtual worlds, lost within our own personal (cyber) space as we rub shoulders with the stranger sat next to us and absentmindedly play footsie with the random across the table. Too close for comfort and yet not close enough to be comfortable. I too am lost in my own inner space, thinking my thoughts as I drink my drink (lukewarm Stella, that'll be £2.90 please sir) just like all the rest, only I lost my Touch around Haymarket when the battery passed away, leaving me all alone; an analogue boy in a digital world, armed only with a pen and a sheet of paper that I borrowed (in the same manner in which one borrows a cigarette) from a stranger on a train. One side in and I've only just begun trying to say whatever it was I was going to say - must elaborate less, abbreviate more (PDA, DS), running out of paper, uh-oh, txt spk, mayB not, I think not. These streams of consciousness - this stream of consciousness, is it life trying to be art or just words on a page, markings on a piece of paper, as relevant as an indecipherable hieroglyphic or a discarded shopping list.?
'Oh sugar!' exclaims the man in the seat opposite (so close, knees touching knees), his DS pressed tongue-lickingly close to his face as he fucks up the game he is playing. The woman sat across the aisle doesn't glance up, so immersed is she in her iPhone (texting? You Tubing? No, Googling for the services of a hitman, I decide, to dispose of her husband who sits across the table, staring listlessly out the window but seeing nothing of the bridges, mosses, slaps and stiles.) Unbeknown to her - though she would hardly be surprised to learn - the man sat behind her is following suit, on hardware if not on software. Her reasons for browsing - a boring husband - are understandable; his - a boring textbook (Energy Systems and Sustainability) - even more so.
'Only 15 minutes until the buffet service, including hot and cold drinks, closes,' announces the guard. I finger my empty can of Stella and survey the rapidly diminishing blank lines - six and counting down - and prepare to say my short goodbyes. All around me, the faint clicking of keypads, furrowing of brows and refreshing of browsers continues unabated. I pat my pocket to feel the reassuring clink of change, put down my pen and begin that long unsteady walk to the front of the train.