The Mad Conductor

Yesterday I was on a train from Leominster to Newport and, in spite of the grey weather, enjoying the view of the steadily encroaching Welsh Hills. Alongside the landscape another enjoyable feature of my journey was the lunatic appointed as conductor. This sounds rather alarming at first, but allow me to elaborate. As soon as he inspected my ticket I knew that he was mad. ‘Ah, a mug shot’ he exclaimed seeing my railcard. ‘Guilty as charged’ he declared, stamping my ticket. As he moved down the carriage he requested ‘will everybody please get out their tickets and wave them in the air like they just don’t care’. When he returned to collect rubbish he enquired if we would like to be shed of any waste? (I myself was shed of an old train ticket.) At one point finding himself confronted by a refreshments trolley, he turned around, made a trumpet call with his hands on his mouth and declared that refreshments were approaching.

But it was while making announcements that his genius really shone. Pulling into Hereford he reminisced of his fond memories of the city in the 1970’s with its ‘thrills and spills’, concluding ‘this one’s for all the old men out there’. At Newport we heard ‘what a city, what a river!’ Somewhere between Hereford and Abergavenny the man opposite me asked his friends if they thought the train company conducted random drug testing. But even if our conductor was a partaker of illicit substances, my pleasure at his company would remain undiminished. As he himself said ‘there’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and I don’t think I need to tell you which side I’m on’. No, he didn’t. He obviously stood on both. This man, bless him, stands as a genius amongst train conductors.