Thursday Nights

Or The Infra-ordinary, the Ordinary and the Extraordinary

Or Endotic, Everyday and Exotic

Every Thursday I take the train to Belfast from my home in Coleraine. Well I did until the MA started. Belfast was so parochial compared with London, Cambridge or Berlin, but it was slightly less ‘one horse’ than St. Catharines or Coleraine. There are some vestiges of culture there.

Being a pensioner, I get to travel free, and I love trains. All those lives moving in the same direction for the duration of the journey. All that energy. It helps me think.

Two days ago was Thursday. We are in the pause between MA modules so I could go to my photography club in Belfast. I took my notebook, my copy of Perec’s “Things: a story of the Sixties”, a portfolio bag to carry home my prints from the club exhibition. Oh, and this week’s ‘Amateur Photographer’. And a camera. Of course. I took some pics of Coleraine station, the footbridge at Ballymoney station and, on the way home, Botanic station.

There was a group of people sitting near me. They had been to Derry. Some old, some young, eating snacks. I couldn’t detect a connection or affinity between them.

Two Indian guys joined me at my table on the train. They asked politely if they could sit down there. They noticed my camera, commented on the retro design, then went on to talk about cricket. I went back to my notebook. I had my critique on module 1.1 of the MA with me and I wanted to review and understand it.

Kate. Kate picked me up from the railway station (Botanic) and drove me to the club. It’s only a 15 minute walk that I like to make. It takes me past the Jubilee maternity hospital, where I was born; then the top of Sandy Row, where I spent the first 3 years of my life and where my family lived for 200 years; past Queen’s University where I first studied …. Kate is happy to pick me up and also bring me back to Botanic station. I usually drop in for a beer , reflect on the night, before taking the train back to Coleraine.

I first met Kate nine years ago. She sold me a camera and we chatted about photography. She told me her club in Belfast was making a trip to Morocco. My local club never did anything like that and I was really envious. So I joined her club too. And went to Morocco. Four locations in 8 days. All our group were thrown together. We bonded well. Since then we go annually to Venice and sometimes take other trips together; Valencia, Tuscany, Connemara, Scotland.

Tinder is the Night

My big night out is on Thursday and goes something like this:

• train to Belfast
• quick meal
• walk to the photography club
• the club event
• walk or lift back to Botanic station area
• drink in the bar
• take pics in the station area
• buy snacks
• pics on the platform
• train ride to Coleraine
• home by midnight

What could be more exciting? Or boring. Or ordinary. ~ Or everyday, everyweek.

Not a seemingly eventful night, usually. As a photographer, I’m always looking for interesting textures, clouds, small scenes, anything that captures my attention.

My train home leaves at 10.44pm. I like to be in the station by 10,30 to look around me there. The area around the station used to be really buzzing as it was near a theatre, the university and some popular pubs. The theatre has closed and many of the pubs too, and the ‘scene’ has moved to the Cathedral quarter. It still has its moments though.

I have been going to this club for the last eight years and observing this area. It reminded me of a friend. (The light went on at some windows behind the station, and the lampshades were large and round, like those popular in the seventies. A girl with long hair walked from room to room. I look for her every Thursday even though the lampshades have gone and trees have grown up in front of the windows.) Sam was the life and soul of a party in his college days, the best time of his life. After that he was the typical ‘Lost Boy’ from The Deep Blue song( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WunROAgb4ww ), still wandering this area at weekends, looking for parties with people he didn’t know.

Last Thursday I boarded the train home. I took out my Perec and my notebook. Oh, and a bag of crisps, wine gums and treats for my dogs. This train is always quite empty so I got a seat with a table. At the next station two young women boarded and sat down across the aisle from me. They were a bit tipsy, talking animatedly about their evening. I went back to my notebook and Perec.

Then Tina spoke to me, asking for a crisp and inviting me to join them. I did. Sue asked me to smell her hands, they still smelled of Paul. Paul was the man she had met that night and he had asked her back to his hotel room. She didn’t go. Tina said she should have. Sue said she was in a loveless marriage. I asked her why she didn’t go with Paul. She showed me pictures of her daughter and of her dog. I brought out the bag of treats I’d bought for my dogs. Tina took one in her mouth, then spat it out. We shook hands and they left the train at the next station.

I went back to my books but this encounter reminded me of a train journey in the Seventies when I was hitch-hiking in Nova Scotia. The hitch-hiking wasn’t too successful and I had to get back to my university, so I took the train. On the train I met a family, a married couple and their daughter, a bit younger than me, on their way home to Quebec. We spoke and they recognised that my accent was Irish and got excited. They were of Irish descent and wanted to talk about the old country. I was cold and tired, so the girl found a blanket somewhere, put it over us and snuggled up to me. I have a pink slip of paper from my old wallet with her contact details. I never did get in touch.

Thoughts on this story

This is what I was trying to convey. The train moving forward, time, different lives, meeting and parting, energies, reflections of the past, repetitions, past affecting future, initiated by objects and songs, the small incidents of life that make up (most of) our lives. Stations where we start and stop, beginnings and endings …