I left a bag with every little thing in it on platform three at York station. Think about my disappointment. I used to be on a direct prepare to London, ending the puzzle I’d been doing on my cellphone as I’d boarded the prepare, so absorbed that I’d left half my baggage – the necessary half – behind. My Sunday was in tatters.
I’d had such a pleasant day deliberate – a pleasant lunchtime prepare journey, after a pleasant morning with household and associates in York, leaving loads of time to get dwelling to observe the England match. But it surely wasn’t to be. It not often is. For that is my particular energy – frequent to many individuals with consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction – endlessly discovering methods of turning leisure time, on this case a calming afternoon, right into a nerve-shredding orgy of panic.
I did a variety of issues suddenly. I slapped myself across the head a number of occasions fairly laborious, uttering the foulest language as I did so. I discovered an 0800 quantity for York station, which wasn’t for York station however for Northern Rail, and there have been no people on the tip of it, solely unhelpful choices. After which the sign went anyway. I known as my brother-in-law, who dropped every little thing and went racing to the station. I discovered the prepare supervisor, who had a secret quantity for the station, and ultimately bought maintain of somebody to hunt my bag. With coronary heart fee hovering, blood stress likely dangerously excessive and a vein pulsing on my temple, I awaited information.
The prepare supervisor reappeared. The bag had been situated. I resisted the temptation to kiss him on the lips. With my brother-in-law closing in on the station, I began formulating a plan. As one in every of Britain’s main idiots, who’s achieved this type of factor one million occasions, I’m excellent at shortly reformulating rigorously laid plans. I’ve needed to be.
I checked prepare occasions again north from King’s Cross, questioning if I may persuade my brother-in-law to fulfill me midway – Peterborough? Newark? – hand over the prodigal bag, discover a pub, and watch the soccer there.
At which level, from deep within the recesses of my addled thoughts, got here a lightbulb second. That morning I’d met a good friend whose son had talked about he was getting the prepare after mine to London, which was leaving in 5 minutes’ time. I begged him to seek out my brother-in-law, who had by now retrieved the bag from the data desk and will give it to him to convey to me at King’s Cross on the very subsequent prepare. It labored. The bag was on its manner, solely half an hour behind me. Really, you might be higher off being fortunate than intelligent.
It was a ravishing factor. What a narrative. What a story arc. I may virtually see the credit rolling, solid so as of look, with due to, and so forth, and so forth. I ought to make a brief movie. Take it to Cannes. Win an award. Un Movie d’un Fool.
Significantly, I typically pity competent folks. They miss out on these thrills and spills. The horror, the phobia that the error can’t be resolved, the frantic rearguard motion, the enjoyment of decision. Redemption. Euphoria. I felt nothing lower than euphoria. To my lasting disgrace, with barely a thought for all of the folks I’d put out, I spent the rest of that journey luxuriating in my triumph. How energised I now felt. A lot happier than if I’d not been silly sufficient to depart my bag with every little thing in it on platform three at York station.
As Tennyson – a person who knew a self-inflicted catastrophe when he noticed one – may need put it, ’tis higher to have misplaced a bag and located it once more than by no means to have misplaced the bloody factor within the first place.
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