Strangers on a train: part two
At first, the third place at the table on my train back from Coventry was taken up by a young Chinese woman. I asked her if she was a student. Very much not. She told me she had an economics PhD obtained from Leicester University and taught at Aston University. She came from Inner Mongolia. We chatted easily about the fall in China’s growth. She was an intrigued as I was by our deaf companions.
At some point she got off, to be replaced by a young Tamil woman originally from Sri Lanka. Folks, this is England! She had been born in Colombo and had come to the UK at the age of nine. We talked of the civil war and the parlous state of the Tamil population in what appears to be the bloody ending of the conflict in the Jaffna peninsular.
She is a psychologist working in a maximum security prison (crumbs!). She devises programmes for working through tense and difficult issues surrounding the containment of long-term prisoners. Far from feeling fear or intimidation from potentially violent prisoners, she told me she absolutely loves her work. She lives with her father in the east end of London, her mum having died years ago of an illness. Her only complaint rested on the long and expensive commute to the midlands.
Another snapshot of who we are and what makes this, even in gathering recession, the most vibrant and varied of societies on earth. Quite a contrast from what we find ourselves emphasising on a nightly basis. I must take more journeys.
I was supposed to nip to Preston to give an early morning lecture to more media students. Normally on the new west coast service you can do this and be back again by 2.00pm, but it seems a risky moment to be nipping anywhere so I’m afraid I eschewed the 5.47am out of Euston. I’ll do it once the crocuses have made it through the ground frosts.