The man who waits for trains

Early evening on a freezing train station platform in Derbyshire. It's 5pm and dark already, and the asphalt surface is glittering in the cold.
The only thing that stops rural train stations - the kind without shopping malls, conveyor-belts of sushi and champagne bars - from being the most interminably dull places on earth is the shared anticipation hanging in the air. We are all waiting for something and, if we're lucky, for someone.
We crane our necks every few seconds waiting eagerly for the first sign of the train which, upon stopping, delivers our loved ones; friends from faraway shires, lovers laden with flowers or just a twinkle in their eye, a daughter returning home from Paris for half-term, all to be met with yelps of delight and bear-hugs and sloppy kisses and even tears. And if not, then there's someone who is waiting for us at the other end of the journey.

Tonight, I am early, and as I sit shivering and people-watching, I begin to notice a man standing on the edge of the platform. He is fabulously unkempt, with wild wiry hair and beard whirling around him like a storm cloud, scruffy hiking clothes and a deeply unfashionable pair of sensible Karrimor walking boots and matching rucksack. He definitely has the air of waiting for something, but in a distinctively passive way. Not like the flubbery, oafish blokes you see at chippies on a Friday night, glaring hypnotised at Mr. Wong or whichever poor soul has undertaken to provide grease and carbs to the gormless yobs, snatching it away to flood with cheap vinegar and eat carelessly on the pavement outside.

Several trains come and go, and yet grandpa is still there, leant against a pillar and staring vaguely towards the oncoming trains. Another huge juggernaut pulls in and unloads and, which a pneumatic sigh, lurches out of the station again. I turn again to the man and I get it. In his hand is a notepad, and he's near enough for me to see the perfectly neat rows of data, painstakingly copied in best handwriting onto the lined paper. The care he has taken in noting down the trains, their names and the time of their arrival into this random, dingy station in the middle of nowhere suddenly fills me with sadness which surges in my chest in great waves. Quite aside from the ridiculously depressing nature of his pastime, it is his loneliness that physically aches; he has been here for at least an hour and there is nobody to wait for, no excitable grandchildren to spoil with Werther's Originals (for that is, of course, what grandads do), no ladyfriend in a studiedly chosen twinset.
It is Friday evening and he should be ensconced in an armchair before a fire and maybe a roast chicken, a bustling wife, generations of family, even a Jack Russell or a little white Westie. Instead, he is shivering on icy tarmac in synthetic fabrics, arthritic fingers clutching a biro, staring into the darkness.

Next time, when you jump off the train into the arms of your lover, flushed at the prospect of a steamy night after time apart, of intimacy and whispers under the duvet, of being held and being loved, of cuddles in the kitchen and milky tea in bed, spare a thought for the trainspotter. Flash him your warmest smile: he'll need it.