We were due to go to Newcastle on the train yesterday, to have a look at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Tempest. So we got the tickets at York Railway Station and made our way over to platform 10 where we boarded the train.
We took our coats off and put them in the rack, got our books out and settled down for a quiet journey. Before we got to the theatre we planned to wander around The Baltic, which is the contemporary art gallery down by the river Tyne at Gateshead.
But after a few minutes the train guard announced that the train would not be leaving the station as someone along the track had thrown himself under the train in front of us and would we please leave our carriages and wait for further announcements about the fatality.
We all got back on the platform and someone said cancelling the train was an extreme reaction for a bit of blood on the tracks. That someone wasn’t me.
Most people milled around on the platform and waited for a miracle.
We went for our car and drove to Newcastle in time for the performance of the play.
On the way we called in at the Angel of the North and spent a few minutes in wonder, as a rainbow arrived at the same time:
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Nov 25th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
I’d love to see ‘The Angel of the North’, as well as ‘Another Place’. These impromptu moments that decide the outcome of life in a favourable way are part of what we live for.
jb says: Hi Andrew, Yes, whatever you do, don’t just drive past.
Nov 26th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Oh…sad.
It’s funny that, though The Tempest stays one of my favourite plays, all I could think about was the person who had thrown himself under the train.
jb says: He haunted me all day, but I couldn’t get a handle on him. Sheer desperation, I suppose, to go like that?
Nov 26th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Amazing and truley beautiful.
jb says: The camera is part of my mobile phone and I had to trim down the image to get it on the page, but in real life . . .
Nov 27th, 2006 at 3:02 am
Yes, JB. You’re right.
To reach a point where he would have totally lost it.
jb says: In the UK in 2004 (the latest figures from the ONS), there were 5,906 suicides in adults aged 15 and over, which represented 1 per cent of the total of all UK deaths. Almost three-quarters of these suicides were among men.
Nov 28th, 2006 at 8:02 am
John, this little dialogue gets sadder by the minute.
The statistics you provided was news to me but informative.
Thank you.
I’m sorry to ramble on so.
But I also recall being in London last year when there was a death in Southall. A young mother jumped with her 2 toddlers onto the tracks of a fast approaching train. It was an inevitable suicide.
There was a lot of talk, analysis & sadness in the city.
I wondered if you’d heard of it.
In Malaysia, the same thing happened in a little town, a few months ago. A young mother with her 3 children, committed the same act though one suspicious child managed to wriggle free and escape.
I can’t even envision those final moments and what it would have been like. It’s too painful to bear thinking about.
The suicides are deliberately masterminded.
I wonder too, that with such women bearing a formidable attitude towards a premature death, that their strength and cleverness, should be so badly misplaced in this way.
Thank you for your time, John.
jb says: Hello again, Susan. It hits harder, somehow, when the lives of young children are involved in a mothers wish to take her own life. I suppose the reasoning is that the children will not have a life without her and that they should, therefore, all go together.
But we who survive can never really know, only speculate and taste some of the diminishing effects in the shadow of these acts.