My Socks that Magically Changed Colour, Page 3

spotted a dirty nondescript locomotive attached to an equally dull train. Deciding to give it a miss I set off for the next platform. Gazing through the platform gate, I spotted a steam engine. It was clean and shiny, and hissing great clouds of steam as it pulled to a halt in the station. “I wonder where it has come from.” I whispered to myself. As I stood there, admiring this shiny beast, its passengers began to disembark. I stood away from the gate, allowing the passengers free access onto the station concourse. I just had to know the exotic location it had come from. Spotting three children exiting the gate, I said, “Excuse me, please, where has this train come from?”

  Looking at me as if I had two heads, the eldest child (it was a boy) replied, “Oxford of course.”

  I was so disappointed. Oxford was too close. It could never, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered exotic. Although it was a magnificent steam engine, it had lost its appeal. I wandered across to the next platform gate.

  As I gazed hopefully through the next platform gate, I hardly believed my eyes, when I spotted the steam engine therein. Resting, resplendent amidst huge clouds of steam, was the Mallard; the fastest steam engine in the world. “Wow! Wow! Wow!” I said over again. “This cannot be happening! Wow!” My eyes were glued to it.

  When I finally calmed down, I wondered why no one was guarding it. I stepped closer to the barrier, hoping to slip through it. “Where are you going?” the ticket collector at the gate suddenly asked me.

  “Onto the platform,” I coyly admitted.

  “Oh no you’re not,” he told me.

  “No?”

  “No. You’re going nowhere without a platform ticket, young man,” he informed me.

  Rummaging through my pockets I found a thrupenny bit, “Here you are,” I said, holding up the money for his inspection.

  “I’m the ticket collector, not the seller,” he told me. “Go over to that machine, yonder, where you can buy one.”

  I looked at where he was pointing. It seemed so far away from the Mallard.

  “You won’t get a platform ticket, standing there,” he told me. I tore across to the said machine.

  “You were quick!” the ticket collector said when I returned with my ticket. “We could do with the likes of you working on British Railways.”

  I was chuffed, incredibly chuffed that he had said such a thing.

  “Hand me your ticket, and I will clip it,” he instructed me. “Then you can enter the platform and see the train.” I handed him the ticket, which he duly clipped. Waving my through the gate, he welcomed me onto the platform. As I approached the Mallard, my legs trembled with excitement. At the gate, the ticket collector said quietly, “Kids and steam; what a strange mix.”

  I could hardly believe it, that I was standing so close to the Mallard; the fastest steam engine in the world. “No one at school will believe me when I tell them about this,” I said to myself. “I wish I had a camera.”

  Running my fingers along its streamlined body, I marvelled at it. “I will get my bedroom painted the same shade of blue,” I promised.

  Although there was no one anyway near the Mallard, it was brimming with energy; fired and ready to go. Approaching the driver’s cab, I said, “Is there anyone there?” There was no one inside. Taking hold of the handrail, I climbed the steps and pulled myself up into the cab.

  Inside the cab was a world dials, levers, cogs, soot and, above all, steam. It was heaven, sheer heaven. Although it was small, the driver’s cab was crammed full of instruments, dials, gauges and other pieces of equipment, all of them so important for driving a train. It reminded me of Doctor Who’s Tardis; bigger on the inside than on the outside.

  Then I spied the engine driver’s seat. Although it was a rather primitive affair, it was a hallowed article in my idealistic, young eyes. It was high, though. I scratched my head thoughtfully, wondering how I might get up to it. Just then, something to the rear of the cab caught my attention. “That is just what I need,” I said gleefully. To be truthful, the item was actually located in the coal tender. Moreover, it was on top of the huge pile of coal secreted therein. Entering the tender, I was in the world of the fireman. There was coal, shiny black coal, everywhere. “I am coming up to get you,” I said to the item above me. Clambering up the mountain of coal, I stretched out my arm and grabbed hold of it. “Got you,” I said to it.

  “You got what?” someone suddenly said to me. I had been found out. With face, hands and clothes covered in coal dust, I returned to the driver’s cab. “What have we got here, one of the black and white minstrels?” an old, round-faced man, dressed in timeworn dungarees, asked.

  “I, I was just getting this,” I explained, showing him the item. “It’s a stool,” I told him,

  “What do you want that for?” he enquired.

  “Because...I...wanted...too...”

  “You wanted to climb it, didn’t you?” he said to me. I nodded. “You wanted to climb it, to the engine driver’s seat, my seat?” I nodded again.

  “Are you the engine driver?” I dared asked.

  “I am,” he told me. “But not for long, though…”

  Intrigued and saddened by his statement, I had to hear more. “Why not?”

  Withdrawing a battered old pipe and an equally battered old tin from one of his pockets, he set about filling the pipe with tobacco. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” he asked, more out of politeness that concern for the health of my lungs (that’s that way things were in those days, you know).

  “It’s fine with me,” I answered.

  Striking a match on the fire door, he sucked on his pipe, filling his lungs with smoke. Watching him, smoking his battered old pipe in front of me, I decided, right there and then, that I was going to smoke a pipe when I grew up.

  “You see,” the engine driver said slowly, thoughtfully to me. “You see,” he said again, as if for added emphasis, “I am retiring today…”

  I was shocked; I was totally shocked that anyone might want to retire from the best job in the world (in my innocence, I had no idea a person has to retire when they reach a certain age), so I said, “Don’t you want to keep working?”

  “Of course I want to keep working,” he answered. “However, they say I am too long in the tooth, to do it safely.” He sucked some more smoke into his lungs, and then he exhaled, filling the cab with same smoke.

  “That’s terrible,” I said to him.

  “The smoke?”

  “No – them making you retire,” I explained.

  Changing the subject, the engine driver asked, “Where are your family?”

  “Mum is in the train, the one that’s going to Holyhead. So is my brother. Maria, my sister, is looking for dad. He’s mad about tea,” I told him.

  “I like it myself. How about you?” he enquired.

  “I like it,” I lied. I hated tea, but could never admit such a ‘failing’ to an engine driver.

  “Do you fancy a cuppa?” he asked me.

  “I would love one,” I answered, lying again.

  Grabbing hold of a duffle bag that was hanging from a hook in the cab, he searched for some tea. “Your train doesn’t leave for almost an hour, you know…”

  “I know,” I glumly replied. “We always arrive early at the station, when going on holiday.”

  “That’s not bad.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, not at all,” he answered. “Arriving early gives you plenty of time to explore the station. “By the way, the name is Joe; Joe Bloggs.”

  I laughed. I tried not to, but in vain. “I’m sorry,” I apologised. “I thought that was only a made up name, for funny stories and the like.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Joe answered. “It takes a lot more than that to rile me.”

  Using the hot water from the engine, the Mallard herself, Joe made two mugs of piping hot tea. Then he asked me if I would like to sit in his seat.

  With eyes beaming bright with excitement, I answered, “YES, YES PLEA
SE.” Placing the stool under his seat, Joe told me to climb up to his seat. I climbed the stool, and then sat on his seat, the best seat in the world.

  “Here is you tea,” he said, handing me a mug of piping hot tea.

  Accepting the mug, I drank heartily from it. Gazing in front of me, at the dials, gauges and levers, I felt as if I was a real engine driver. It was GREAT.

  When we had finished our tea, Joe showed me around the engine. He showed me every part of it, from top to bottom. He explained what everything was for, how it worked and why it worked so much better on the Mallard. Before stepping aboard the Mallard, I considered myself an expert on steam locomotives. By the time Joe finished, telling me about the Mallard, I realised how little I had up until then known.

  “I think it’s about time you returned to your family,” Joe said to me, when we finished inspecting the outside of the steam engine.

  “Do I really have to go?” I grumbled.

  “If you want to get on your train, you do,” he answered.

  Thanking him for the wonderful tour, I waved Joe a sad goodbye. As I walked slowly away from the Mallard, a huge blast of steam escaped from the engine. I was engulfed within it.

  A few moments later, when the steam had dissipated, I glanced back over my shoulder, to see if Joe was still waving goodbye. Joe, however, was nowhere to be seen. As I made my way along the platform, I felt dampness in my shoes. Gazing down at them, I was surprised – shocked by what I saw. My socks were wet – and they had changed colour, from blue to yellow!

  “Wow! That’s magic!” I whooped. Then I