Honour of the Line Read Online Free
Author: Brian Darley
wouldn’t really have cared if the Queen Mother was present. His attitude would be ‘let her pay for a first class ticket then she could sit amongst her own’.
Eventually we slowed down as the train rounded the Stafford curves, I had read about them in railway magazines, they were quite severe and had a speed limit on them. Mum asked me what the station was called and when I told her she gave Dad a few more minutes beauty sleep before calling him to say we were nearly there. Dad seemed calm but Mum’s voice was extremely tense. I remember asking her what my sister’s name was going to be and she got really choked up as she said Daisy, after her Mum who had died giving birth to her.
On the approach to Crewe we were all getting really excited and I just hoped that my new little sis would be a lot less trouble for Mum and Dad than I was. I began to realise I had to change for the better, but how was the problem? We had arranged to meet our distant relative who we had never met or spoken to before, we had only seen photos of her.
We had arranged to meet up with her at the Northern end of Platform 4. We hadn’t been there very long before we heard the station announcer say that the approaching train was for Bristol Temple Meads and it was the 11.35 from Liverpool Lime Street. Could they be on this train perhaps I wondered? We all waited as patiently as we could until finally this very smart lady, wearing a grey suit, walked towards us and introduced herself as Aunty Edie, which I assumed was short for Edith. Pleasantries were exchanged and she then took us to the waiting room which was empty except for a rather weary looking lady, who was probably only in her early twenties. She was accompanied by two young children and a baby in a carry-cot. The mother looked as though she had been to hell and back, it must have been torture for the poor lady. She simply handed Daisy to my Mum and left the waiting room with her other two kids, showing no emotion whatsoever, as neither did the children. To this day my little sister has no knowledge of any sort of her real brother and sister, wherever they are or whatever happened to them.
Official forms were signed by Mum and Dad, we said our goodbyes and Dad carried Daisy as we made our way to the platform for Euston. By this time I had got into the big brother mode and sadly I probably missed many chances to increase my train number collection. There were steam trains everywhere, mostly filthy dirty and in the twilight of their life. When our train finally trundled in it was jam-packed and, to make things worse, the journey time was longer as we skirted the industrial Midlands on a different route which took us via the Black Country foundries of Wolverhampton and England’s second city Birmingham. The fact Daisy was screaming for Britain didn’t exactly make things comfortable, although she did eventually settle down with the pre-made bottle her biological mother had prepared for her.
It was dark when we finally arrived back in Colwood, our home town, and for the one and only time in my childhood we took a taxi. The journey to the Arches only took two or three minutes but I felt so posh. It was a black car and the driver wore a smart suit, a peaked cap and held the door open for us to get out when we arrived at our home. Grandad and his sister were in our house, they had been left the spare key and Aunty Win had a stew on the go which was the first food we had seen for hours.
Around the table everyone seemed so happy but things were quickly wound up as I had school the following day, plus Dad and Grandad had to be up early for work. Paternity Leave was another generation away yet. Work rules were simple those days, no work no pay and if a man were to let his employer down more than once it quite often resulted in him being awarded the DCM. Despite the grand sounding of this title it was an easy way for the boss to tell the worker he had been sacked. The DCM stood for ‘Don’t come
Eventually we slowed down as the train rounded the Stafford curves, I had read about them in railway magazines, they were quite severe and had a speed limit on them. Mum asked me what the station was called and when I told her she gave Dad a few more minutes beauty sleep before calling him to say we were nearly there. Dad seemed calm but Mum’s voice was extremely tense. I remember asking her what my sister’s name was going to be and she got really choked up as she said Daisy, after her Mum who had died giving birth to her.
On the approach to Crewe we were all getting really excited and I just hoped that my new little sis would be a lot less trouble for Mum and Dad than I was. I began to realise I had to change for the better, but how was the problem? We had arranged to meet our distant relative who we had never met or spoken to before, we had only seen photos of her.
We had arranged to meet up with her at the Northern end of Platform 4. We hadn’t been there very long before we heard the station announcer say that the approaching train was for Bristol Temple Meads and it was the 11.35 from Liverpool Lime Street. Could they be on this train perhaps I wondered? We all waited as patiently as we could until finally this very smart lady, wearing a grey suit, walked towards us and introduced herself as Aunty Edie, which I assumed was short for Edith. Pleasantries were exchanged and she then took us to the waiting room which was empty except for a rather weary looking lady, who was probably only in her early twenties. She was accompanied by two young children and a baby in a carry-cot. The mother looked as though she had been to hell and back, it must have been torture for the poor lady. She simply handed Daisy to my Mum and left the waiting room with her other two kids, showing no emotion whatsoever, as neither did the children. To this day my little sister has no knowledge of any sort of her real brother and sister, wherever they are or whatever happened to them.
Official forms were signed by Mum and Dad, we said our goodbyes and Dad carried Daisy as we made our way to the platform for Euston. By this time I had got into the big brother mode and sadly I probably missed many chances to increase my train number collection. There were steam trains everywhere, mostly filthy dirty and in the twilight of their life. When our train finally trundled in it was jam-packed and, to make things worse, the journey time was longer as we skirted the industrial Midlands on a different route which took us via the Black Country foundries of Wolverhampton and England’s second city Birmingham. The fact Daisy was screaming for Britain didn’t exactly make things comfortable, although she did eventually settle down with the pre-made bottle her biological mother had prepared for her.
It was dark when we finally arrived back in Colwood, our home town, and for the one and only time in my childhood we took a taxi. The journey to the Arches only took two or three minutes but I felt so posh. It was a black car and the driver wore a smart suit, a peaked cap and held the door open for us to get out when we arrived at our home. Grandad and his sister were in our house, they had been left the spare key and Aunty Win had a stew on the go which was the first food we had seen for hours.
Around the table everyone seemed so happy but things were quickly wound up as I had school the following day, plus Dad and Grandad had to be up early for work. Paternity Leave was another generation away yet. Work rules were simple those days, no work no pay and if a man were to let his employer down more than once it quite often resulted in him being awarded the DCM. Despite the grand sounding of this title it was an easy way for the boss to tell the worker he had been sacked. The DCM stood for ‘Don’t come
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