TICKET TO SUCCESS

"Return to Edinburgh please," I say, glancing across at the train arriving at the opposite platform.

"You’ll not get that one,” the ticket operative remarks, flatly.

I’ll not get that one! Now that’s the reason he’s sat at the other side of a sheet of glass spewing forth boring little pieces of reformed rainforest, while I’m partly in charge of a semi-successful, often creative production company.

I’ll show you 'not get that one’. I snatch up the tickets (which I sense he has spewed forth a tad slower than usual to help prove his point) and bolt for the door. I have learnt, and he obviously hasn't, that we’re not limited by what we can’t do, but what we think we can’t do. The world isn't made up of people who can and people who can’t. It’s made up of people who can, some of whom think they can’t. It’s all about having the right mental attitude which, if you ask me, he hasn’t.


He’s there every day and I know he hates me. Once I asked for a VAT receipt and he just said: “There’s no VAT on transport”. Okay, so whereas I just know about VAT and not trains, he knows about VAT and trains. Smart arse. The next time I queued at the other window even though his was vacant. 

He used to call me ‘pal', which people like him call you when they’re pretending not to hate you. Now he doesn’t call me anything.

Sometimes I wonder where it all went wrong between us. Is he resentful that whereas he just sits there and spews them forth, I use them to go places? Often quite attractive places - such as across the Forth Bridge just around the corner. Or is it because I’m English? I mean he can’t be happy sat in that dimly lit room all day not going over the Forth Bridge can he? And I’m sure he holds the elite ruling classes of my homeland at least partly responsible. Or perhaps he notices me favouring his far more personable fellow spewer at the other window. 

Thankfully they've installed a glass screen to stop him punching me in the face.

Bounding energetically up the steps onto the footbridge I wonder why we allow ourselves to be tamed by timetabling, stymied by the fear of standing out. Imagine what we could achieve if we refused to submit and took back control?

"Hold on, I’m coming," I holler in a spirited fashion to the man on the platform with the hi-vis jacket and strange white paddle, who is no-doubt taken aback by this rare display of dynamism. I’m probably the first person in weeks to reach out to him as a human being. Appeal to his innate capacity for compassion. I know he’ll hold the train because, unlike my friend in the ticket office, he’s on my side. He understands I’m a passenger. And the point of a train - and of being a man in a hi-vis jacket with a strange white paddle - is to get passengers to where they want to go. 

I'm going to make an impression today, I can feel it. And this man can be a part of it by getting me to where I'm going to make it.

You see I believe people are fundamentally good. It’s just that these days we don’t give them the opportunity to show it. We never demand anything. We never expect anyone to do anything for anyone but themselves. We sit tight behind our sheets of glass. This isn’t just an opportunity for me to catch a train, it’s an opportunity for him to be a good man.

Half way across the footbridge the train pulls out of the station. I head back to the ticket office to kick the door down.


@jesoverthinksit 

For more enlightening tales of public transport get on board:

1 Day, 2 Flights, 5 Shit Excuses
Recovered
Airport Philosophy Part 1: Identity of Indiscernibles