(Waiting for) The Ghost Train

Have you ever seen the film The Ghost Train? It was made in 1941 and stars Arthur Askey. I recall watching it several times in my youth and found it quite terrifying. A group of people are stranded in the snow at a train station and the station master, Ted Holmes, appears and tells them about a ghost train that travels along the line. He turns out to be a ghost himself. This wasn’t a twist in the style of M. Knight Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (You may be aware that the twist at the end of all of his other films was that they were shit and you’d just wasted two hours of your life) but Old Ted Holmes being a ghost was scary to me at that age. My brothers and I shared a bedroom until I was seven and, occasionally, when the lights were turned out at night one of them would whisper ‘Old Ted Holmes’. Aaaargghh!!

Wednesday began at 4am. An awful lot of my days have been like that lately as the pressure to keep pace with the final payments for tradesmen tightens. Obviously, as I get more tired I work more slowly and it become increasingly likely I’ll be awake and working in the middle of the night. I know it makes no sense. After a few hours of report writing I headed to Mansfield by train where I would be spending the next three days. We have, you’ll be aware, had a bit of wintry weather lately. After visiting the gym on Sunday I had a brief wander around Jephson Gardens in town with my camera. I’d been up at four that day also and was aware that it was minus ten outside. That temperature initially didn’t feel any different to the normal temperatures we experience in winter until I noticed that I’d lost the use of my hands and couldn’t operate the camera. Although it’s been cold we haven’t had an awful lot of snow in Warwickshire and even what we have had didn’t stop me from exercising out on Newbold Comyn on Tuesday. I’ve seen Rocky IV so knew a bit of snow was no reason to restrict my activities. Marianna thinks I’m insane.

Prior to my exercise session we had both visited the house. It was good that more of the floor had been laid but it should have been finished the previous week. The front door and its frame had been delivered on Thursday but because the floor wasn’t laid it wasn’t fitted and was clearly being rested in one place and then moved when they wanted to remove that section of flooring. Hopefully it wouldn’t be damaged during these little journeys. It was also nice that so many of the internal doors were now fitted and had handles but on two of them chunks of plaster had been damaged when they were fitted. Marianna returned there Wednesday evening and reported to me that John had begun fitting radiators on the ground floor, still bending the pipes and failing to use any common sense. During Wednesday and Thursday she sent me text messages saying that the front door had been fitted and looked wonderful and when she visited the house on Thursday she found four carpenters, three painters, a plasterer and a tiler (and a partridge in a pear tree).

It was only a mildly noteworthy journey. Ever so slightly the landscape became more wintry as the train travelled north. I should have changed trains at Derby but the train I was on was cancelled a couple of minutes after we pulled into Birmingham station. I was slightly relieved since about fifteen teenage girls had just entered the carriage and I knew that tiredness wasn’t going to make me think their noisy energy was charming. While I waited for a train to Nottingham trains to Liverpool, London, Edinburgh and Lincoln were cancelled. When I got to Nottingham it was evident that a couple of centimetres of snow had fallen. I watched the monitors as more trains from there were cancelled. My own, to Mansfield, was one of them. It appeared that the snow had performed a pincer movement around Leamington Spa but had covered most of the rest of the country. The next train arrived though and over the next half an hour as we travelled to Mansfield more and more snowfall became evident. I got a call from the solicitors hosting my first appointment for Thursday telling me they were closing and might try opening again on Friday. It was a surreal scene in Mansfield. The town was covered in a foot and a half of snow. I was in British Columbia the last time I saw snow like this. I arrived in Mansfield wearing my suit but no winter clothing. I own coats, gloves, hats and all sorts of things but they’re in the storage unit. I walked over to The Midland Hotel which is about twenty paces from the train station platform. A man and woman were just beginning to clear a path from the hotel door so they were able to watch me lifting my feet high to clear the snow to get to them. I stayed there a month or so ago. Most would describe it as ‘Cheap and Cheerful’. Well, one out of two isn’t bad. On that stay, in the morning, I happened upon the cleaner and asked if she could direct me to the solicitors I was due to visit. She only directed me as far as the woman on reception. She didn’t know the address so called for Eric. When the aged Eric appeared he sagaciously told me “What you want to do is go into the town centre”. “Yes?“ “And ask someone there. They’ll be bound to know”.  Marvelous.  The address turned out to be about a quarter of a mile along the same road as the hotel. I quickly checked in and headed off to find my sexually deviant client in his solicitor’s office. I didn’t request directions.


I’m not a fan of Zombie films, although I saw Nigel Havers in a play once, but there is a genre of film I haven’t watched many of but ‘I am Legend’ and ‘28 Days Later’ would be part of it. They seem to involve someone who is the last living person on the planet wandering around deserted cities, particularly past their most famous landmarks. Mansfield was much like this. Once I left the hotel I barely saw a soul. There were certainly no cars to be found since the roads were snow covered. It was impossible to know what was road, what was pavement and what wasn’t compacted frozen snow which would quickly land me on my backside. I minced my way to the solicitor’s offices. In the pedestrianised town centre the pavements had been cleared and very generously gritted. It was like walking in a cat litter tray. I hadn’t been to this solicitor’s office before. The staff who had made it to work were leaving as I arrived. One person was going to stay just so they could let me out later. The building was positioned right by the shopping mall and when the mall’s automatic doors opened a brief soundbite of Mud, Jona Lewie or some other festive tune wafted across to me. It mixed strangely with the recollections of the client with a propensity for indecent exposure.


I walked back to the hotel around 4.30. The only people I saw were council employees spreading more grit in the market place. Shops, cafes, pubs; everything was closed. It was truly bizarre. The couple had finished clearing a path from the train station to the hotel but I was coming from the town this time so again arrived after lifting my feet high to clear the snow. My room was okay but smelled as if a flatulent Alsatian had been trapped in there for a week and was released moments before I checked in. It had everything you could need though; a bible placed by The Gideons and a selection of teabags placed by PG Tips.


I thought I’d woken in the Overlook Hotel from ‘The Shining’ on Thursday morning, having slept for an impressive ten hours. My window gave me a lovely view of the train station and the complete lack of activity there. There had been substantial snowfall overnight. When I went downstairs for breakfast I discovered that I was now in a ‘people stranded in a snowbound hotel’ movie. My fellow strandees included an aged couple both of whom had hearing aids which were clearly ineffective as they shouted at each other across the room; “TEA?”, “CEREAL?”. I asked them if they were trapped by the snow and they told me their home was only a few miles away but the trains stopped going further north than Mansfield the previous evening. I noted that they didn’t shout at me, or the Polish waitress, only each other because both thought the other was deaf. My breakfast consisted of all the things too unhealthy for me to normally touch. We were joined by a limping man who also wanted to go further north and had managed to fall and hurt his ankle in attempting the twenty paces between the station and hotel. I’ve seen ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ and was worried that the future of the human race might depend on the four of us. It would be down to me or the limper to reproduce with the deaf octogenarian.  I thought the Polish waitress may have been a better bet. She was brunette, or at least her moustache was.  The woman enquired of the waitress if there was chemist nearby. She said there was a Boots just two hundred yards the other side of the train station but thought it might be closed. “It isn’t” said the limping man. “I’ve just been over there to get some hair gel”. You know you have vanity issues when you’ll limp through knee deep snow to make sure your hairy is spiky. I wished everyone good luck with trying to complete their journeys.

I returned to my room to call the solicitors hosting the appointments for the afternoon and Friday. The one I was due to visit at 1pm was open and the two for Friday were open too. Ten minutes later the one for 1pm called to say they were closing. I hadn’t noticed intense snowfall or an avalanche in the past ten minutes so was bemused by this. The cancellations didn’t bother me. Normally I would rearrange things so as to meet a deadline but I happily told them that because of the snow and upcoming holidays they could add five weeks to the deadline. So, I had a day in a manky hotel in Mansfield ahead of me. I had the laptop and lots of work to do though. I decided against venturing out to make snow angels, an igloo or a snowman and avoided daytime television which seemed to largely involve people buying homes in foreign countries, buying antiques, moving to the country or being in a hospital. I did spot a show called ‘Homes under the Hammer’ which featured people buying semi-derelict houses and renovating them. Idiots. I did conclude, though, that my room could be instantly closed and reopened as stain museum. There were stains on the carpet, duvet, lamp shade, desk and pretty much everywhere else. When checking in I noted that they had a honeymoon suite. Does it bode well for your married life that it begins in a lowly hotel a stones throw from Mansfield train station? Perhaps that was the room they’d given me. At 10am I noticed that there were ten men outside the train station clearing paths through the snow. They had COMMUNITY PAYBACK on the back of the high visibility tabards they were wearing. I guess on a day when no trains were running clearing a path to the station was a matter of urgency. Their time could have been better spent acting as a form of transport. There were ten of them and four of us strandees. They could have just carried us to our destinations. At one o’clock they were back to work on the new snow fall. The victims of their crimes would have enjoyed the pointlessness of this.

So I spent Thursday in the room typing. I began Friday by checking if the appointments which had been confirmed the previous day would be going ahead. The phone for the solicitors who would be hosting my 9am was transferred to their Worksop office after a certain number of rings. I called every five minutes. “Hello, is that Worksop or Mansfield?”. “It’s Worksop Mr Bodger”. “Yes, you’re right it’s me again. I’m sorry. They clearly still aren’t open at Mansfield. I’ll stop calling”. I called the Solicitors where I was due to be at 1pm. They were open. They would call the client and see if she could attend early. She’d stood me up some weeks previously so I wasn’t optimistic about attendance at all, let alone early attendance. Although there are elements to The Midland Hotel that leave a lot to be desired the staff couldn’t be more friendly helpful. I checked out of my room and was allowed to set up office in the bar for more typing. The barman positioned an electric heater next to me. I was then informed that the telephone landlines weren’t working in Mansfield. I rang the solicitors again. “Worksop?”. “Yes, Patrick”. My friend, the Worksop receptionist, gave me the mobile number for a colleague in Mansfield. I called them and they confirmed that the office had been open the whole time. However, my client hadn’t attended. Criminality and inclement weather clearly do not make for good attendance. It was 9.40am but Eric was in the bar working on his third pint. He asked what I did and why I was there. I explained that I was a forensic psychologist and had five clients booked but slowly all appointments were being cancelled. He talked at me for about ten minutes. I’m not sure if my face exhibited indications of interest. Ninety minutes later a drinking partner joined him and he chose to introduce me; “This gentleman’s a barrister. Got stuck on his way to Sheffield”. I just looked over and nodded but wondered if I had actually been speaking English earlier. “Barristers earn a lot of money” said friendofEric. “Yes they do” I said, confirming my identity as a Sheffield based barrister. Thankfully, he lost interest in me before I was forced to invent an entire life in Sheffield with stories of court cases I’d worked on, my wife, children, golf club and ultimately a dinner invite for him and Eric. More friends joined them later. As I sat typing while they drank I felt like the only person at the fancy dress party attending out of costume. Of course at 1pm when I called the solicitors my client hadn’t turned up. One client out of five was not a great result for the week. I walked over to the train station and joined a huddle of people. I was hoping to catch the 13.41. A young woman told me they had also waited for the 13.11 and 12.41 but no trains appeared. Waiting for the Ghost Train.

But the 13.41 came.