London

Of course the first thing you notice is the extreme drop in temperature; it could be a lot worse; I mean it's not like going to Canada or the North Pole. At the moment it's about forty five degrees - in this room!!!! I jest - it just feels like that but it was forty five when we landed.

They are used to the cold here so they have their thermostats turned down to 17 degrees Celsius and I keep putting it up to 22; now what that is in English (even though this is England!!) I don't know. I've just found a converter on line - 17 = 62.6, F and 22 = 71.6.

But it is The Fall - autumn when the leaves fall from the trees and together with that and a damp atmosphere it's rather squishy underfoot as you walk along the pavements here - which are those things the Americans call sidewalks.

I can't say it's the most pleasant sensation walking in such an atmosphere - I'd much prefer the sunshine and dryness of LA.

We arrived at 7.30 am local time today and took the express train from Heathrow to Ealing; that's about 15 - 20 minutes. It's a bit silly getting a ride as the train is so much faster.

London is now full of Polish immigrants; they work in the pubs as bar men and bar maids, in coffee shops and cafes and in construction.

Sixty years ago it was the Irish doing the same thing; building Britain after the devastation of the war had flattened lots of the conurbations and factories. As then, it is mainly the young who are new to working here and, as before with the Irish, a lot of them will stay as permanent residents and become invisible immigrants as they are the same colour as the English. Not so with the Jamaicans and other West Indian immigrants of sixty years ago; they have settled in ok but have attracted attention to themselves merely because of their colour and they are, sometimes, the targets of bigots and racist groups; these tend to organise themselves and a right wing political group called the British National Party has had their leader, Nick Griffin, voted in as a member of the European Parliament for North West England in the 2009 European Elections. There was some controversy here when the BBC allowed him to appear on one of their editions of Question Time.

So there is an undercurrent of racial tension. In the 1950s when the immigrants came they were, as I said earlier, predominantly young - also single which meant that the Irish had a reputation for partying - and why shouldn't a good looking group of people party? The same accusations are now aimed at the Poles.

There is a shop around the corner which is owned and run by Asians; I don't mean Asian as the Americans describe people from Japan and China but Pakistanis and Indians and people from various African countries of Indian extraction. What I have noticed is that some young Poles, some very big Poles - and a lot of them are big - tend to hang around that shop with the little Pakistanis and I have also noticed that there is very rarely any trouble in that shop from racist thugs with the big boys hanging around. Is that good or bad? Is vigilantism on the rise or will it eventually be the same as America with security guards in every store?

As I write this there have been two bangs; not gunfire but fireworks. There was also a bottle rocket that went off when I first started to type and then two very loud bangs just now.

It was November 5th yesterday; Bonfire Night which I wrote about the other day. I suppose they had bonfires and fireworks last night and, because it's Saturday tomorrow, there will be a lot more tomorrow night. The wrong time for me to come as I hate fireworks!!

Sleep - the cure all and Brafield-on-the-green.

Some time ago, when the children were growing up, we lived, what seemed, miles away from anywhere. We lived in a little village in Northamptonshire (above) called Brafield-on-the-green; I think it was around four miles south east of Northampton and about sixteen miles north west of Bedford.

I caught trains to London from both railway stations and then it was about one hour into London via Bedford and a bit longer from Northampton; the journey might seem ideal on paper but in real life it was a pain in the arse – especially when the journey was just for a five minute audition.

But life in Brafield was very peaceful and the children were brought up in, what their memories seem, idyllic conditions. They had to travel the four miles into Northampton when they left their village school in Brafield for the big wide world on the big bad bus as we couldn't always take them there and bring them back home in the car.

The kids in the village were children of farm workers and were raised up as country lads and lasses with a knowledge of the countryside and were not necessarily 'street wise.' It was strange for me to go from my life in a village, where I would brew beer and wine and even baked my own bread, to the metropolis of London with my work in films and TV and my time away in the theatre in other cities of the UK.

Once in a while youths of the village would knock our door carrying a few dead rabbits they had shot and offering them to us very cheaply. We never bought any preferring to buy our rabbits from the market in Northampton which had been skinned and dressed and ready for our stew. I can't believe how expensive rabbit is now from the butchers here in Los Angeles compared to what it was back then in Northampton.

The house we lived in had three bedrooms but was rambling with lots of nooks and crannies, a big walk in pantry and a Rayburn cooker/oven, with a kettle of water always on the go and which kept the house really warm during the cold winters. I remember one really cold snap when we were, more or less, trapped in our houses for a day sitting by that Rayburn, reading The Guardian whilst the kids played in other parts of the house or into the one hundred foot garden to make a snowman.

We had an abundance of cats which came and went frequently particularly when they were killed on the main road that split the village between the middle and working classes. That part of the village has slowly become middle class now, I hear, so I can imagine what it's like with the use of coasters, doilies and fish knives catching on.

One cat we had was a beautiful big white one called Flossie. She was a clever cat and would manipulate the door handle and let herself into the living room from the kitchen. Then she would settle herself on top of my stereo unit, or even one of our laps, and sleep.

We didn't have a cat-flap so the cats would jump onto the living room window and meow then we would let them in.

One night Flossie jumped up on the window ledge and she looked in distress. When I let her in I could see she had been shot. Obviously some kid was taking time off from hanging around by the telephone box (which is what the kids of the village did in those days) and shot her; the pellet had lodged around by her hip. She ran passed me and jumped onto the top of my stereo unit and cleaned the wound; then she went to sleep.

She seemed quite comfortable so we left her and she slept till the following afternoon; when she woke up she seemed fine so we left her and didn't bother to take her to the vet. The pellet stayed in her hip for the rest of her life which ended some time later when she was killed on the main A428; she was the last one of our cats to die that way run over by some vehicle or other.

What cured Flossie that day was sleep; sleep has been the greatest cure since records began and an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. population suffers from insomnia and is considered second only to cigarette smoking as dangerous for your health. It has been linked to a variety of health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and chronic pain.

When my wife had pneumonia recently she slept for days; the body knows what it needs and it induces sleep to cure – why then can't anybody sleep when they are in hospital?

I know – I have a strange way of making a point!!

A friend of mine left hospital last week and was glad to get home to get some peace. The nurses, doctors, ancillary workers, orderlies, auxiliaries and even the security people talk and move about as if it's the middle of the day. Patients have the TV on full blast, call out loud for the nurses and the para medics even take patients home on the middle of the night.

My friend was dropped home in an ambulance at 10:45 pm last week. When she queried this with the para medics, they told her it was nothing; they took people home all through the night.

What kind of sense if it when the greatest cure for nearly everything is sleep that the people running hospitals keep you awake.

I rest my case.

Laurence Olivier.

 

                              Laurence Olivier.  

I read a biography of Laurence Olivier at one time, and the writer opined that he was the greatest actor in the world for one reason, and one reason alone; because he wanted to be.

Now there is something to that.

Not too long ago I wrote a post about Mark Rylance whom it was considered was the current (then) best actor in the world; same reason! He wanted to be - or people wanted him to be - or whatever floated their boat or, to be more precise, filled their theatres.

There was something else I read about Olivier and it opened (not opined this time) by saying 'he was no intellectual' – I mean how could he be, he left school at 15? Okay he went to drama school but so did I; and left school at 15.

Even though Olivier may have been considered to be the best actor in the world, at one time, according to the great man himself, he had to do about 30 or 40 takes in a film, with William Wyler, and when he got frustrated, he said to Wyler “Willie; I did it this way, I've done it that way. I've done it faster and slower - what do you want me to do?”

And Wyler said “I want you to do it better!”

Best actor in the world?

The thing is – and it might have been whilst getting the above direction – he stamped his character on Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – Samuel Goldwyn called it Withering Heights, according to Olivier.

In fact the anecdotes above are from Olivier himself.

The thing about Heathcliff is that he was from the back streets of Liverpool – a bit of rough – and he fell for the lady of the house, the posh girl and Olivier played him with a posh English accent. Today he would be played by someone from Liverpool.

There are people – actors – here who still worship him; of course there are others who don't like him at all, but he had the two or three things it calls for to be a star – he was ambitious, talented and not very clever.

I think the latter is very important because, according to the great playwright Brien Friel, to be a star to have to have huge huge ambition, a talent that is sensational and unique (there's only one Sir Laurence) and no brain.

And when you think about it, it has a lot of truth.

I know – and I am bound to know – a lot of actors. A lot of them are friends but none of my friends are huge stars – I have a very famous cousin, whom I have never met and when I think about him he may be as thick as two short planks too, for all I know; I don't know, which is why I won't name him, but Friel's view is that brains get in the way. 

Maybe they do and maybe they don't!

If you wanted to be a movie star, you are good looking and you think you have what it takes, what kind of a reaction would you get if you took the idea to the bank?

What kind of business plan would you present to them and if they fell for it, what advice would these very clever people give you?

Imagine, for one wonderful moment, going on to the TV show Dragon's Den.

The people on Dragon's Den (they changed the title in America to Shark's Tank.) – the so called Dragons – are the most ambitious kind of people there are, but would you really want to have a drink with them?

They'd be talking about the business plan, the yield, the profit, the bottom line – I have been in the company of such people and I have seen the attitude and the way their face changes if you give them a good idea.

I was on a train once and standing next to me was a businessman with the suit, the brief case, the Financial Times, the whole nine yards, and he complained about the train.

It was British Rail then and he said they had no idea (BR that was – look at it now) how to run it. 

And I said “why don't they put advertisements at the back of the seats” and a bulb went off in his head; I could see it.

“Advertise!” he said.

His name?

I have no idea who he was! But that bulb!!

As I was saying I know loads of actors and I have known briefly well known ones on the way up: pains in the arse, stars up there: pains in the arse and stars who were stars here and when I met them in Hollywood they were nice people again; they were lost, they didn't know where to go, where to network (arse hole creep) but when I pointed them in the right direction they became pains in the arse again.

Not being able to look you in the eye in case an important casting director or director came into the room, so they could talk to them and you know it's a sight to see.

What happens is, they sidle up to their prey with a big smile on their face and start a little chat; after about three minutes or so another person will come up and take the head honcho away - I'm sure they are hired to do this – leaving the networker marooned in the middle of the floor.

But you will see others, other networkers, dappled throughout the room, waiting to pounce like hyenas on the savanna – in fact looking like hyenas with their teeth, ready to smile, and their eyes widening and scrunching so as to show them off at their best, waiting for their victim to be alone.

I think the reason I don't know the big big stars intimately is that they don't seem to have many friends; on the way up they twitch and walk around, can't sit down for long, they worry that they'll miss a phone call or a casting and they are no company at all and in any case, as in Hollywood, they drop you and forget you as soon as you've shown them the way.

They pretend to forget you as they know that you know what kind of a prat they really are.

I met quite a few stars in Hollywood and some of them were nice – George Clooney is charming and quite well informed – so it doesn't happen to everybody.

Mrs Gandhi and an Englishman Abroad.

 

I once met Mrs Gandhi; now if you knew me you would wonder how some bum of an actor with only one TV credit in the year of 1983 could get to meet the leader of the world’s largest democracy.
It had, indeed, started off as a bad year which I had inherited from the year before; in February I was offered one episode of The Angels – a BBC hospital soap – playing the role of a cop in one scene; I jumped at it; we had three kids to feed.
On the first day of rehearsals I bumped into a BBC producer, Innes Lloyd, in the lift at the BBC rehearsal rooms in North Acton – fondly known as the North Acton Hilton because of its size - and he told me that he had tried to get me for his John Schlessinger film An Englishman Abroad, with Alan Bates, but that my agent had told him I was unavailable.
As I was a big fan of John Schlessinger’s films, I wasn’t very pleased; surely we could have come to some arrangement after all I was only in one scene in ‘The Angels’ and we could have…..oh it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I did my one scene – filmed at some hospital in Coventry and started to look for another agent.
When I got home one day my wife was buzzing with excitement; I couldn’t calm her down.
She had received a telephone call from The Guardian newspaper: our fourteen year old daughter had won an essay writing competition and the prize was a couple of weeks in India for two.
The trip would include staying in New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Bombay and Lonavala staying in the best hotels and included £250 spending money - each.
The essay compared life in The Himalayas to life in England; of course she had never been to The Himalayas and her observations were taken from her geography lessons and her reading of Victor Zorza’s Indian columns in The Guardian under the title The Village Voice – which was about a village north of New Delhi and not The Himalayas at all.
I have to take the credit for pointing out the columns to her and telling her about the competition.
My wife was adamant that I should accompany our daughter to India; it was a world away in those days – it’s a world away these days but we have seen live cricket from there – and my wife felt our daughter needed her father; as it happened she was right but that’s another story.
So we set off for India: the trip was sponsored by Air India and The Guardian and judged by the editor of The Guardian, Peter Preston and my favourite Guardian columnist James Cameron – no not the Titanic/Avatar creator.
There were two other winners: a fourteen year old girl from Bristol and a nineteen year old boy from somewhere in the home counties; his father accompanied him and the girl from Bristol was accompanied by her female English teacher.
We had to have injections for cholera, typhoid and polio and took pills for malaria.
The evening before we were due to fly out to New Delhi we met and were entertained by the Indian High Commissioner and his family at his London residence; they gave us tea with warm milk and samosas; the High Commissioner and his family were charming – as it turned out it was a taste of what was to come – and when they spoke to us they shook their heads, Peter Sellers style, which was something else we saw a lot of in India.
Later that day we were installed in a really nice hotel near Gloucester Road tube station and went out to eat at a posh Indian Restaurant close by; ‘Princess Margaret comes here often’ we were told and we felt really important.
The following morning we emerged for breakfast and it seemed the father and son, from the Home Counties, had never eaten Indian food before and were feeling a bit green around the gills; they hadn’t even tried it as an experiment when they heard they were going to spend a little time in the sub-continent; this was also a sign of things to come: on our second day in India they didn’t even make it out of their room and had to postpone their trip to the Taj Mahal so we went ahead without them; I had wondered about the title of the John Schlessinger film An Englishman Abroad but in India it was slowly starting to make sense.
Their Delhi Belly, or whatever it was, deprived them of one of the greatest train journeys I have ever taken and the wonderful experience at Delhi Railway Station; it was such a huge exciting culture shock that I can still smell and taste it now: everything out of the story and picture books came to life; porters with four or five suit cases on their heads, a blind beggar and a beggar with no hands; crowds of people asleep on the platforms; bikes, rickshaws and more bikes.
There was a certain smell about the place; a smell not unpleasant although it might have been to some; a smell I got to like even though it was probably a mixture of faeces, urine and spices; the father and son missed the first class travel on that train, and from New Delhi to Agra, we were extremely comfortable in individual reclining seats – I remember thinking ‘you don’t get this in Britain!’
The food was freshly cooked and the staff on the train was at our beck and call.
The lavatories on the train gave an introduction to the Indian way of life; there were two lavatories in each cubicle: one for the western way and one for the Asian way; the Asian way was just a hole in the floor as the Asians squat whilst we, the westerners, sit on the loo.
As we looked through the windows on the train we saw plenty of evidence of this as it was early in the morning and people were going about their daily ablutions – in public; they were standing under stand pipes washing their bodies and if we saw one man squatting for a crap we saw a hundred.
I still have the image now of men in the distance squatting with a tail going from their bottoms to the ground.
We learned that they wiped their arses with the paper in their left hands and ate with their right.
Our daughter had never flown before and the journey from Heathrow to New Delhi was a good way of getting used to it. I don’t know how long the flight was but I remember eating, drinking, sleeping, eating again and still being in the air; the flight wasn’t very full and I appeared in the ‘in flight’ movie on that flight and also on the way back; an embarrassingly small role, I have to add, and nobody noticed me in the movie but they all saw my name in the end credits.
Stepping off the plane the heat and humidity hit our ankles even though it was April and dark. It was something like five in the morning UK time but we were raring to go.
We lived in Northampton at the time – maybe that was why my acting career was going south – and whenever we told anybody in India where we lived in England, their eyebrows would lift in confusion and then they would give that charming shake of the head we had seen at the High Commissioner’s Residence; they had never heard of Northampton so we would quickly add ‘sixty miles north of London.’
Even though it was late we needed to rise very early the following morning as an extra trip had been arranged; so at five fifteen I had my first Indian breakfast: masala omelette, toast and tea with hot milk.
Two Ambassador type cars picked us up at the front of our hotel and we were whisked off to Mrs Gandhi’s residence.
Yes we were going to meet the formidable Mrs ‘G’; her official residence seemed to be in a residential area, and we were led into a huge garden; there must have been two or three hundred other people there as there was some rule in India that anyone could show up to meet the Prime Minister; whether she actually met any of them I don’t know.
After the cold and dark of Britain, we were suddenly in a heat wave and hit by extreme brightness from the early morning sun; I had my white jacket on and even wore a tie; the local inhabitants wore very loose clothes, huge bell-bottom trousers or flairs and nearly all wore hats.
Parakeets and monkeys roamed freely as we followed a smiling official towards the main building; there didn’t seem to be a lot of noise but a kind of hum about the place accompanied by the whirls of cameras, the odd call from a human in the distance and then lots of squawking from the parakeets.
Over one side of the garden was a party of people huddled together; I got the impression that this was a whole organisation that had shown up to see the premier and not just their duly elected representatives.
We were shown into a kind of outer room and the others waiting in there seemed very nervous.
I suppose as an actor I had worked, and have worked since, with well known people; well known people in show business world, that is, not world leaders who go down in history; well known people so full of themselves, sometimes, that they are very unpleasant and sometimes when these well known people suddenly become unknown people it’s a bit of a relief.
After about five minutes or so we were called and led into another room; the room didn’t seem to have any aesthetic qualities at all, the furniture was functional: a sofa, an occasional table and a few chairs; behind the table was an open French window, which led to a quiet part of the garden, and another doorway was covered by a curtain.
When Mrs Gandhi entered she did the full theatrical bit through that curtain; she walked in as if she was the leader of the biggest democracy in the world, she walked in like a world leader, an important member of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty and a figure of history.
She was accompanied by a few bodyguards; I have often thought about those body guards as it was her private bodyguard that turned and killed her eighteen months later in the grounds of that very building.
Everybody stood up when she entered and she sat down between the two girls on the sofa; our daughter and the other fourteen year old girl.
Straight away it was obvious she was very comfortable with them; she started to chat informally but I noticed she didn’t have any small talk at all; she asked them about their essays, how they liked India – even though we had only been there eight hours - and would they ever consider coming back again; then she asked them where they lived; when it was our daughter’s turn she said she lived in Northampton sixty miles north of London: “I know where Northampton is” Mrs Gandhi snapped “I was at Oxford.”
At one point I noticed Mrs Gandhi ring a bell she had secreted in her hand; through the curtain came somebody and before we could see them she asked them to get a photographer; this was the cue for us to stand behind her but it was also the cue for the bodyguards to push and shove each other to try and get into the shot.
I was standing at the end so didn’t think I had a chance of being included because when the photographer got ready to take the photo he seemed to aim it over to the other side of the room; but one of the body guards tried to get his face in to the shot and gave me a little push; I shoved gently back and in the subsequent photo he disappeared totally behind the person standing next to me; serves him right.

See above.

After the photo Mrs Gandhi shook hands with a couple of us and swept out as sweepingly as she had swept in.
I often think about those body guards.

My Favourite Smell

Wrekin College

If I was to ask you what your favourite smell is – what would you say? Your favourite after shave lotion? Some expensive scent like Chanel? 

Let's think of something else like the smell of rain; smells good doesn't it but what if it was from an aerosol!! The smell of lavender from a fabric softener? What about the smell of shit from an aerosol. Smells just as good to me as anything from an aerosol like rain or lavender.

When I was a student I worked as a milkman for a short while, and oh how it sent me round the twist. I was at a dairy in Wellington, Shropshire; I had to cycle on a old bike for half an hour every morning at the crack of dawn, get to the bakery, load my van and go out to deliver milk.

It was an electrically controlled vehicle powered like the dodgem cars at a fairground, which I have written about before on here. It had two pedals, like an automatic car, but we used our left foot on the brake with the right on the accelerator which is not recommended in cars.

Each house I delivered milk to had its own smell; the the big posh school, Wrekin College, had it's own smell too; the masters and mistresses and the professors lived 'in house' and when I delivered I discovered my favourite smell, a welcoming smell the greatest smell in the world . . . .. well bear with me, indulge me for a little while and see where this goes. Believe me I don't know at the moment which, I think, is the reason I write this blog, which is to discover what's going on in my mind.

After I delivered to the school – which was to various staff members as well as the place where they cooked for the pupils – I went to private houses and as usual I formed impressions of each of them. 

I could kind of tell who were the clever people, the people who were newly rich (the nouveau riché), the pretentious, the thoroughbreds, the educated and the people I envied, at that time, but no more.

For instance, there was a big house called 'Mad-hatters' another called 'Karjohn' and it became obvious to me that Karen and John had named the latter and didn't have much of an imagination – okay, okay they couldn't call their semi-detached 'Grey Gables' or anything like that, but why not leave it just to its number? 

Mad-hatters had my favourite smell and every time I went there I could tell that they were a warm family – and indeed they were – with their multitude of children (or what seemed a multitude) and great taste in cars, clothes, furniture and the very building itself. 

Each time I opened their gate, carrying three bottles of Jersey Cream milk (in one hand I venture to add) the smell would hit me the closer I got to the kitchen – of course you can guess what it is by now! 

As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the West Midlands, and where sterilised milk was and is also available, meant the people who bought it didn't have a fridge or were brought up in a household who didn't have a fridge, and if you have never tasted sterilised milk you have never suffered. 

Of course if you haven't tasted Jersey Cream Milk you've never tasted milk.

By the way everything in America is homogenised; you get skimmed, semi-skimmed and full cream milk but it's all - - - homogenised! 

But that's America; let's go back to Wellington: there was a big house on the corner of a very big street – in fact I think it was actually on a roundabout; it had a wide gateway, which was surrounded by a high privet, and I could drive the van – hang on it was called a milk float – I could drive the milk float, and the drive had enough room for me to get in and turn around quite easily.  

Living in this house was a very tiny woman with a very high squeaky voice. I don't know what kind of house it was, but there were loads of teenagers hanging around all the time, and sometimes, I could smell dope – yes I knew the smell of dope I was at drama school even though I never smoked any. 

I think, in retrospect, that it might have been some kind of half way house, with the tiny woman working for some kind of rehab organisation; I had to deliver all kinds of milk to them, apart from the expensive kind, and I figured that the inhabitants were from broken homes and dysfunctional families, because of the large order of sterilised – or sterra as they called it – I delivered.

Okay so I generalise, but sociology generalises too, otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!

On Friday evenings I collected money from the customers, which meant calling around at their houses; some people would leave their money on the doorstep, in the mornings, but one particular man would invite me in to his house: as soon as I went in, it was quite obvious he was anticipating my visit. I followed him to the back part of his house to a tiny room. In this room there was a table, with nothing but an exercise book laid open to a particular page. Next to the page, was a little bit of money; enough for the seven pints of milk I had delivered that week; I had to take the money, but not before I signed for it.

After that he walked me to his door and got on with his oh so busy life – I don't think!!!!

Now let me tell you this – I was going to write this post today about something else – and it was this:

When the nuclear accident happened in Chernobyl, the population were told that they had to leave - every single one of them. They were told they could only take one thing away with them, and the people scurried around to choose and find, find and choose and take it to their new life, wherever that might be. One man chose a door – a single door; the door had been used to lay out members of his family when they died. . . . and I got to thinking what would I take – what would it be? I thought about it for some time and was disappointed that I couldn't think of anything so what would yours be?

But back to my favourite smell – bacon. The smell of cooking bacon and indeed the smell of cooking and food, when going in to people's houses, is so welcoming that any attempt to cover it with aerosols or fresh air is to be discouraged.

But the smell of bacon and the taste of it – to me – are two totally different things: It's nearly as disappointing as the taste of coco cola.

 

Los Angeles to Chicago by train: including a death in Fort Madison, Iowa. 2.

                                      Our train resting in Chicago.

                                                        .

This is an entry from 2011: we were returning from Los Angeles to London. I find it hard to believe it was thirteen years ago and I read it again just now.

We are on a train and stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico where the temperature between the inside of the train and outside is vast. We were out walking along the platform, looking at the array of Indian trinkets, blankets and the like and, as we were doing this, it was over ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

The journey, so far, has been entertaining. The priority of time on this train has taken a back seat to the attention to detail, the running of the system, and the pleasure of travel.

There is no wi-fi on the train, so I will write in bits over this journey through America from Los Angeles to Chicago; unless anything extraordinary happens between Chicago and New York, I won't write about that part of the journey as I've already written 'On a Train in England' in March, 2011.

The first thing we heard last night, when we got on, was a message over the speaker system from Chip the lounge car attendant, telling us he was delayed slightly getting his groceries, and had a problem with his fridge, and asked us to give him a break, and that he would be starting shortly with a bill of fare which includes coffee, beer, pizza, burgers and potato chips.

After a little while he came on again to say, he was open which meant that everybody on the train went to Chip the lounge car attendant and lined up; his little lounge car is like a mini Seven Eleven – maybe about 30 feet long, with passengers seats on either side – so you can imagine the hustle and bustle.

On the menu it said that they had 'freshly brewed' decaf coffee but when I went there afterwards he told me they were out of decaf!!!

NB: in those days I didn't take caffeine.

After that we heard from 'Jackie in the Diner' – she was asking people if they wanted to make dinner reservations; she would say 'this is Jackie in the diner – would anybody wishing to book for dinner make your reservations now.' This voice would come on at various intervals asking people to come in for dinner, lunch or whatever.

Then Chip from the lounge car would come on again telling us he was going on a break, so if anybody wanted anything they needed to hurry up and come and get it.

Things were swinging along and we were travelling, then Jackie came on the speaker system again, and wanted to know if people could hear her, as the system didn't appear to be working. Chip from the lounge car came on to say he could, in fact, hear her.

When he said this a woman, sitting close by, using her cell- phone, and speaking quite loudly in a New York accent, said 'This is Dolores from Delaware; I need to speak to Mr Jefferson.'

This sounded interesting but then Jackie came on the speaker system again saying 'I can't hear you at all, Chip; you're not coming through.'

Then again 'This is Delores from Delaware! Can you put me through?'

'This is Chip from the lounge car – I am back from my break; if you want bagels or drinks now is the time to come.'

Whilst this was going on over the speaker system, a ticket collector interrupted all by saying he was coming around for tickets and 'don't forget to sign them in the top left hand corner.'

Each time he took a ticket from someone who hadn't signed it he would say 'I need you to put your autograph in the top left hand corner.'

Jackie came on again 'This is Jackie in the diner – am I coming through?'

'I can hear you, Jackie' said Chip from the lounge car.'

'This is Delores from Delaware – is Mister Jefferson there?”

The ticket inspector approached us puffing and blowing after climbing some stairs 'those stairs are killing me' he said; we're on the top deck.

'This is Jackie from the diner; I will be coming around to take dinner reservations, starting with the sleeping section and then coach.'

I sat reflecting about my years in America, seventeen of them, knowing that they are contemplating an all electric super duper rail system which will get you from point A to point B faster than a speeding bullet, and wishing they wouldn't do it, as it would spoil this lot.

The food in the lounge car was ropey to say the least, but the food in the diner was excellent and reasonably priced.

There are four seats at each table, so you are forced to face the other two people, which more or less forces you to communicate with them.

On the first evening at dinner we sat with a Navajo professor and his wife; he was quite famous as he was the first Indian professor – I don't know if he was the first in the state or the country, but he told us he had celebrated his 67th birthday recently by walking down one side of the Grand Canyon, along the flat bit, and up the other side; he was a very fit looking guy, for his age, and he told us he does 10K runs, and was formally a baseball pitcher. I don't know if he was a major league pitcher or just played at college level, as we never got that far, but they were getting out at Flagstaff, Arizona the following morning at 4:30.

The next morning, at breakfast, we met Tom and Jenny from Victorville California; famous for the place where Roy Rogers used to live, and have his western museum; I remember his horse, trigger, nearly stepping on me at the stage door, after I saw Roy Rogers live at a theatre in Birmingham, England. I have to say that as there are quite a few Birminghams in America apart from the one in Alabama.

Tom and Jenny were also an interesting couple having cycled the world, by all accounts; regular train travellers.

In the Observation Car I met another Navajo Indian, this one lived on the reservation. As we sat watching New Mexico flash by, he pointed out lots things about the area, particularly some black stones, in the distance, which he said were from the top of 'that mountain' which exploded with the help of the volcano hundreds of millions of years ago. He went on to say that they used the black stones (he had a name for them which I have forgotten) in their sweat lodges.

He was going from Gallup, New Mexico, to Albuquerque, to meet his son; he was sending his son a message using the modern equivalent of the 'smoke signal', he joked; his Blackberry phone.

He said he was proud of his son as he took the decision to leave the reservation and set up by himself 'abroad.' He said he had lived 'abroad' for a short time – abroad was anywhere off the reservation.

Indeed it is abroad as the reservations have their own sovereignty.

Later that day, Saturday, we had dinner with two people on their way back to live in Chicago from Los Angeles – we wished them well on their journey and they did the same for us.

Before we met them for dinner – in the usual accidental way – a man two seats in front of us was getting leery; he had been drinking all day and his voice was sounding very horse.

Whilst we were away, he called everybody names and started shouting; someone called the conductor who came and told him off; he sat in his seat for a moment but when the conductor went away, he started again. Saying the same things, but this time he was really screaming, so the conductor, a young woman, threw him into his chair, called the cops and they threw him off the train at the next station, and into gaol somewhere; we were oblivious to all this as we were at dinner with our bicycle travellers.

Chip in the lounge car came on the loud speaker, as we pulled in to Fort Madison, Iowa, to say that he was running out of food in the lounge car; he was out of bagels, pizzas and most of the cheese and ham sandwiches.

As the train pulled out of Fort Madison it stopped; we had run over somebody. We were travelling at about 15 - 20 mph and apparently the person was killed. We don't know anything about it at the moment but within two or three minutes I saw a cop car outside scaling a six feet fence; then he was told where the body was by some kids outside.

The latest news is a few young guys tried to cross the tracks and the last one was hit and killed by the train; there's no need to describe what we know or what I saw but you know what train wheels are like; the young guys were all in their early twenties.

As we sit here waiting to move a voice in the background is heard: 'This is Delores from Delaware; I am just north of the train station in Fort Madison, Iowa. Today a man was killed . . . .”

As if oblivious to everything, whilst this was going on, another voice was heard ' this is Chip in the lounge car – I'm just back from my break.'

               Cops look at the body (out of shot) as paramedics call the coroner.