Brief Encounter
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: My sister is a 'sooty' and I went to her birthday party with momentous results.
_____________________________________________________________________
I wonder what the collective noun is for steam railway enthusiasts? ‘Steamies' was my first thought until I realised that term is more appropriate to chronically gossiping ladies of a certain age. They have, of course, moved the scene of their operations from the communal bath house to the coffee shop, swapping mangles for lattes and frayed woollen shawls for Hermes scarves, but the dissection of the manners and morals of neighbours is still the same both in content and virulence.
I suppose the steam railway buffs are motivated by nostalgia for the trappings of a bygone age. It is hard, I will admit, to get sentimental about an intercity train with a Wi-Fi socket beside every comfortable seat but I think much of the nostalgia is the result of forgetfulness. I remember badly sprung coaches with uncut moquette seats containing a century of dust that rose, when you sat down, like midges from bog myrtle.
One good thing is that the preserved railways run through scenic stretches of England but real steam trains were slow to accelerate through dingy, decaying city streets showing Britain at its worst. Queen Street low level had the right idea, keeping you underground until you passed Charing Cross.
Then there was the dirt: steam trains must be the filthiest form of transport ever invented! The smoke stacks were so short that the mixture of steam, cinders and soot stayed in the boundary layer and was carried the length of the train at window level. Even with the windows closed you arrived with your white shirt a dingy clerical grey. The steamy filth that survived passage through your nose went straight to your lungs giving you a sore throat on the way through, and leaving your mouth gritty.
Sherlock Holmes wrote one of his famous monographs on handkerchiefs used during a railway journey. He claimed to be able not only to tell the route you had travelled from the sooty snot but the time of day when you undertook the journey.
Anyway! My sister and her husband are ‘sooties’, the collective noun I coined, helping to run a preserved steam service. She decided to invite her friends to a birthday party aboard their train. I was invited because my advancing years seem to have imbued me with enough respectability even for a relative. Scratch your bum at forty-five and people are affronted; do the same at seventy-five and they say ‘he’s such a card, bless him’.
I am always a bit wary of my sister’s bright ideas because they have a tendency to contain prat falls that you stumble into unexpectedly. She upset half the people in the village where we were brought up by buying cups of tea on the ferry. A steamie of about twenty village ladies including our Mum went to Greenock every week to look at the shops. On the twenty minute cruise from Gourock, Elspeth, home on a visit, insisted on buying all the ladies tea.
What she failed to appreciate was that the steamie was in the habit of buying freshly baked scones and fairy cakes to round off the day by rounding out their figures. It is hard to be genuinely grateful for a free cup of tea when you can see the cakes within reach but beyond your grasp. It was only out of respect for Mum that they stopped short of open rebellion, contenting themselves with barely audible grumbles and dirty looks.
Mum was too busy bumming to everyone how well Elspeth and her husband were doing to notice the lack of solid nourishment and the poisonous atmosphere. It was only at a wapenshaw two days later that she realised the extent of the faux pas when very pointed remarks were made over tea in the Bowling Green club house. The weapons on show that day may only have been tongues but they were sharp enough to cut deep and malicious enough to make the wounds fester.
You can imagine my relief when I discovered that the birthday party was not being catered by the station buffet. Stewed tea and stale buns would have been several stops too far on the branch line down memory lane! I can recommend Tesco chardonnay for clearing the palette of sooty steam – I believe that it is also cheaper than mace in deterring attackers and is just as effective. To enhance the ambiance of a day out we ate fish and chips; we were able to eat them out of genuine newspapers thanks to a friend of Elspeth’s who works for Health and Safety and was able to get us special permission to use printed wrappings. Of course, the papers had to be unread but we were able to pick up a day-old batch quite cheaply at wholesalers. Apparently, in the Stock Broker Belt they charge fifty pence extra for delivering the Sun totally enclosed in the Times.
The train trip was good and the party on the platform at the terminus was developing nicely so I was feeling relaxed and at ease – too relaxed as it transpired!
I have been living alone for some years and I have no wish to put myself back under the authority of a woman. I am no catch, you should understand, but as I get older my relative status improves; many of my competitors have pulled out leaving an increasing deficit of eligible, vertical and modestly mobile men. The market is also particularly strong in women who are still married but are making preliminary reconnaissance for their future.
I really enjoy talking to people and it would be too boring just to talk to men so I have had to develop a strategy for social intercourse with women that stops short of the more intimate variety. I emphasise the failures in my life and I miss my cues. I do not want to teach granny to suck eggs – although I know a few grannies who will pretend not to have that traditional skill in the hope that I might teach them!
The mating game works to an established pattern. First, the man shows an interest in the woman as a person; I do this with great enthusiasm, and often find a story in the interchange. Then the woman smiles and shows an interest in the man, his hobbies and his antecedents. At that stage, the man is supposed to move the relationship forward: I do not. I either continue to be friendly and interested if the woman is a sensitive soul, or I avoid her for some weeks – sometimes for ever after if she is a bit brash and pushy.
It is a wonderfully effective method of keeping the cougar from the door. They mostly go in the huff but none of them have found a way to restart the stalled relationship. Please note that the method, while most effective on sober Anglo Saxons and anglicised Celts, would be unlikely to work on hybrid North Americans.
Portrayed by my brother-in-law as a bumbling old fool who had missed opportunities all through his life, I did not expect any trouble at my sister’s birthday party. So I relaxed and before I could pull myself together I was in deep trouble. Elspeth was introducing me to people and her first essay was so easy to deal with that I relaxed even more.
Georgina –‘call me Georgie, everybody does’ – was dressed to capture rather than captivate. It was late afternoon when we were introduced but she was wearing full evening makeup with the result that you could see where the untreated neck started. Her dress was artfully chosen to hide her pot belly and burgeoning thighs while exposing a cleavage so wide and deep that you could have hidden a two month old wean in it. The light was still too strong, however, so you could see that the flesh on such generous display was slightly crinkled. It was all tastefully done - her bra was no more than a couple of sizes too small – but just an hour or two early for optimum impact.
She seemed good value for a short story and I kept her attention long enough to get some ideas – for the story, I hasten to assure you!! She was clearly in full hunting mode but that made her easy to get rid of. When I made it clear that I had been a school teacher and had never been promoted she quickly did her sums on my probable worth and started looking over my shoulder. She soon excused herself to find another man standing alone.
After a few minutes of flirting involving much arm and hand touching by Georgie, his wife sailed up. Totally unphased, Georgie transferred the arm touching to the woman and the pair of them dived into girl-talk. After about five minutes the man wandered off bored rigid. This performance was repeated with minor variations for the rest of the party.
I started putting together a story about Georgie in my head while I stood nursing the paint-stripper grade wine. She was such a menace that I was struggling to find a reason why she was tolerated in her social circle. I was toying with the notion that she was threatening her friends with a candid autobiography to explain her survival when Elspeth brought another poor lassie to be introduced to her brother.
Jane, so Elspeth said, was a gym freak like me. Since she and her husband spend days tramping over moors so bleak that even Hecate and the girls would hesitate to cross them, I thought it a bit cheeky for her to mock me for trying to slow the inevitable slide into dissolution. Cnut tried to stop the tide coming in but when you get older you want to stop it ebbing.
Jane had certainly benefited more from her exercise routine than I had with my paunch defying every exercise known to man. She was dressed in a stylish summer dress that accentuated without flaunting her figure. She had on open-toed medium heels that emphasised her pretty feet and ankles. She was matching my scrutiny with a searching survey of her own .Clearly she was less impressed than I for she remarked that Georgie had not stayed with me for long, then she turned and walked away without even an apology!
Of course, I was intrigued and, I freely admit, more than a little miffed. To restore my self-esteem, I pictured her at the start of a new relationship where the first heady days were making her unaware of the presence of other men – namely, me. That cop-out was swiftly shattered since she became involved in animated conversations with, it seemed, every man in the room except me. Elspeth, with a wry smile, confirmed that Jane had not had a significant other for more than four years. She was well known for being friendly with everyone but committed to no one.
So why had she blanked me? Who did she think she was? I am fairly presentable, reasonably witty and nowadays rarely fart in public. Why, then, had she failed to smile at me, why had she not chatted to me and why had she not given me the usual signals that I was free to make a move on her? She was not to know that I would, as always, ignore the signals and let her walk away after I had filled my need to converse.
No one was going to ignore me like that! I would make her want to know me better; I would have her begging for another moment in my company; I would have her thinking of wedding bells and happily ever afters. Then, and only then, would I dump her!
As a plan it was flawless but something happened that I still do not understand. Perhaps I should ask Jane since she is sitting beside me in the plane taking us on our honeymoon.
Swearwords: None.
Description: My sister is a 'sooty' and I went to her birthday party with momentous results.
_____________________________________________________________________
I wonder what the collective noun is for steam railway enthusiasts? ‘Steamies' was my first thought until I realised that term is more appropriate to chronically gossiping ladies of a certain age. They have, of course, moved the scene of their operations from the communal bath house to the coffee shop, swapping mangles for lattes and frayed woollen shawls for Hermes scarves, but the dissection of the manners and morals of neighbours is still the same both in content and virulence.
I suppose the steam railway buffs are motivated by nostalgia for the trappings of a bygone age. It is hard, I will admit, to get sentimental about an intercity train with a Wi-Fi socket beside every comfortable seat but I think much of the nostalgia is the result of forgetfulness. I remember badly sprung coaches with uncut moquette seats containing a century of dust that rose, when you sat down, like midges from bog myrtle.
One good thing is that the preserved railways run through scenic stretches of England but real steam trains were slow to accelerate through dingy, decaying city streets showing Britain at its worst. Queen Street low level had the right idea, keeping you underground until you passed Charing Cross.
Then there was the dirt: steam trains must be the filthiest form of transport ever invented! The smoke stacks were so short that the mixture of steam, cinders and soot stayed in the boundary layer and was carried the length of the train at window level. Even with the windows closed you arrived with your white shirt a dingy clerical grey. The steamy filth that survived passage through your nose went straight to your lungs giving you a sore throat on the way through, and leaving your mouth gritty.
Sherlock Holmes wrote one of his famous monographs on handkerchiefs used during a railway journey. He claimed to be able not only to tell the route you had travelled from the sooty snot but the time of day when you undertook the journey.
Anyway! My sister and her husband are ‘sooties’, the collective noun I coined, helping to run a preserved steam service. She decided to invite her friends to a birthday party aboard their train. I was invited because my advancing years seem to have imbued me with enough respectability even for a relative. Scratch your bum at forty-five and people are affronted; do the same at seventy-five and they say ‘he’s such a card, bless him’.
I am always a bit wary of my sister’s bright ideas because they have a tendency to contain prat falls that you stumble into unexpectedly. She upset half the people in the village where we were brought up by buying cups of tea on the ferry. A steamie of about twenty village ladies including our Mum went to Greenock every week to look at the shops. On the twenty minute cruise from Gourock, Elspeth, home on a visit, insisted on buying all the ladies tea.
What she failed to appreciate was that the steamie was in the habit of buying freshly baked scones and fairy cakes to round off the day by rounding out their figures. It is hard to be genuinely grateful for a free cup of tea when you can see the cakes within reach but beyond your grasp. It was only out of respect for Mum that they stopped short of open rebellion, contenting themselves with barely audible grumbles and dirty looks.
Mum was too busy bumming to everyone how well Elspeth and her husband were doing to notice the lack of solid nourishment and the poisonous atmosphere. It was only at a wapenshaw two days later that she realised the extent of the faux pas when very pointed remarks were made over tea in the Bowling Green club house. The weapons on show that day may only have been tongues but they were sharp enough to cut deep and malicious enough to make the wounds fester.
You can imagine my relief when I discovered that the birthday party was not being catered by the station buffet. Stewed tea and stale buns would have been several stops too far on the branch line down memory lane! I can recommend Tesco chardonnay for clearing the palette of sooty steam – I believe that it is also cheaper than mace in deterring attackers and is just as effective. To enhance the ambiance of a day out we ate fish and chips; we were able to eat them out of genuine newspapers thanks to a friend of Elspeth’s who works for Health and Safety and was able to get us special permission to use printed wrappings. Of course, the papers had to be unread but we were able to pick up a day-old batch quite cheaply at wholesalers. Apparently, in the Stock Broker Belt they charge fifty pence extra for delivering the Sun totally enclosed in the Times.
The train trip was good and the party on the platform at the terminus was developing nicely so I was feeling relaxed and at ease – too relaxed as it transpired!
I have been living alone for some years and I have no wish to put myself back under the authority of a woman. I am no catch, you should understand, but as I get older my relative status improves; many of my competitors have pulled out leaving an increasing deficit of eligible, vertical and modestly mobile men. The market is also particularly strong in women who are still married but are making preliminary reconnaissance for their future.
I really enjoy talking to people and it would be too boring just to talk to men so I have had to develop a strategy for social intercourse with women that stops short of the more intimate variety. I emphasise the failures in my life and I miss my cues. I do not want to teach granny to suck eggs – although I know a few grannies who will pretend not to have that traditional skill in the hope that I might teach them!
The mating game works to an established pattern. First, the man shows an interest in the woman as a person; I do this with great enthusiasm, and often find a story in the interchange. Then the woman smiles and shows an interest in the man, his hobbies and his antecedents. At that stage, the man is supposed to move the relationship forward: I do not. I either continue to be friendly and interested if the woman is a sensitive soul, or I avoid her for some weeks – sometimes for ever after if she is a bit brash and pushy.
It is a wonderfully effective method of keeping the cougar from the door. They mostly go in the huff but none of them have found a way to restart the stalled relationship. Please note that the method, while most effective on sober Anglo Saxons and anglicised Celts, would be unlikely to work on hybrid North Americans.
Portrayed by my brother-in-law as a bumbling old fool who had missed opportunities all through his life, I did not expect any trouble at my sister’s birthday party. So I relaxed and before I could pull myself together I was in deep trouble. Elspeth was introducing me to people and her first essay was so easy to deal with that I relaxed even more.
Georgina –‘call me Georgie, everybody does’ – was dressed to capture rather than captivate. It was late afternoon when we were introduced but she was wearing full evening makeup with the result that you could see where the untreated neck started. Her dress was artfully chosen to hide her pot belly and burgeoning thighs while exposing a cleavage so wide and deep that you could have hidden a two month old wean in it. The light was still too strong, however, so you could see that the flesh on such generous display was slightly crinkled. It was all tastefully done - her bra was no more than a couple of sizes too small – but just an hour or two early for optimum impact.
She seemed good value for a short story and I kept her attention long enough to get some ideas – for the story, I hasten to assure you!! She was clearly in full hunting mode but that made her easy to get rid of. When I made it clear that I had been a school teacher and had never been promoted she quickly did her sums on my probable worth and started looking over my shoulder. She soon excused herself to find another man standing alone.
After a few minutes of flirting involving much arm and hand touching by Georgie, his wife sailed up. Totally unphased, Georgie transferred the arm touching to the woman and the pair of them dived into girl-talk. After about five minutes the man wandered off bored rigid. This performance was repeated with minor variations for the rest of the party.
I started putting together a story about Georgie in my head while I stood nursing the paint-stripper grade wine. She was such a menace that I was struggling to find a reason why she was tolerated in her social circle. I was toying with the notion that she was threatening her friends with a candid autobiography to explain her survival when Elspeth brought another poor lassie to be introduced to her brother.
Jane, so Elspeth said, was a gym freak like me. Since she and her husband spend days tramping over moors so bleak that even Hecate and the girls would hesitate to cross them, I thought it a bit cheeky for her to mock me for trying to slow the inevitable slide into dissolution. Cnut tried to stop the tide coming in but when you get older you want to stop it ebbing.
Jane had certainly benefited more from her exercise routine than I had with my paunch defying every exercise known to man. She was dressed in a stylish summer dress that accentuated without flaunting her figure. She had on open-toed medium heels that emphasised her pretty feet and ankles. She was matching my scrutiny with a searching survey of her own .Clearly she was less impressed than I for she remarked that Georgie had not stayed with me for long, then she turned and walked away without even an apology!
Of course, I was intrigued and, I freely admit, more than a little miffed. To restore my self-esteem, I pictured her at the start of a new relationship where the first heady days were making her unaware of the presence of other men – namely, me. That cop-out was swiftly shattered since she became involved in animated conversations with, it seemed, every man in the room except me. Elspeth, with a wry smile, confirmed that Jane had not had a significant other for more than four years. She was well known for being friendly with everyone but committed to no one.
So why had she blanked me? Who did she think she was? I am fairly presentable, reasonably witty and nowadays rarely fart in public. Why, then, had she failed to smile at me, why had she not chatted to me and why had she not given me the usual signals that I was free to make a move on her? She was not to know that I would, as always, ignore the signals and let her walk away after I had filled my need to converse.
No one was going to ignore me like that! I would make her want to know me better; I would have her begging for another moment in my company; I would have her thinking of wedding bells and happily ever afters. Then, and only then, would I dump her!
As a plan it was flawless but something happened that I still do not understand. Perhaps I should ask Jane since she is sitting beside me in the plane taking us on our honeymoon.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.