Small World Jem Clarke 47School Days Sophia Waugh

Small World My brief encounter at Cleethorpes Station

I fell for a beauty on the platform – until a pigeon chased her away jem clarke

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents…

A warrior’s Valhalla is an endless banqueting table with flowing ale, chicken drumsticks and the backing dancers from a mid-’70s Top of the Pops.

For commuters like me, the afterlife will be more like my wet Wednesday morning. I was sitting in a railwaystation coffee franchise, neither entirely inside nor outside. A pigeon stared at me from the next table as I sipped a bottomless cup of just-about-warm coffee delivered by Ross.

Ross became assistant manager of the place within months of starting his first job, when ‘no one came back after Omicron’. He breezily leant over me, took a straw and blew air at the pigeon, which took flight. I last saw it cannonballing into WH Smith’s stationery section.

At the next table, there was a suited lady toying with her overpriced jam on toast. She combined all my anxiety trigger points in one person: female, tiny and business-minded. If any psychiatrist unpeeled my psychological onion, she would find Mother wrapped up inside.

This woman kept glancing in my direction. At first, I thought it was my admittedly vivid imagination, but no – glances two, three and four followed. I licked my eyebrows down and chanced a direct smile. With a look of alarm, she directed her gaze slightly above my head. I was sitting on a table directly below the Live Train Timetable Display Screen.

She was looking not for the 4ft 11 from Cleethorpes, but for the 9.10 from Adwick.

As she proceeded to do important things on her laptop, I took out my mobile phone – eager to impress her – and pretended to be doing something worthy and weighty.

In fact, I was trying to find my local radio station on BBC Sounds. This makes my brow furrow in a way the casual observer would mistake for executive stress.

Suddenly, the returning pigeon landed directly on her keypad. She shrieked. Seizing the chance to be her knight in shining armour, I shoved a straw in my mouth and launched myself towards the pigeon.

As I moved forward, my large (well, large on me) rucksack fell off my shoulders, trapping my arms behind my back. Straw in mouth, I rounded on my prey. I inadvertently breathed in rather than out. The pigeon didn’t move an inch.

Retreating from the pigeon, the businesswoman rushed off in pursuit of Ross, who was mopping in the corner.

This time, I remembered to breathe out and the pigeon pushed off. At the same moment, my keys flopped from my jacket pocket onto her jammy toast. With my arms locked, Houdini-style, by the damned rucksack, I took the only course available. I planted my face in her strawberry preserve and pulled myself upright, keys triumphantly clamped between my teeth.

The lady pushed off in a huff about the pigeon, barking warnings at Ross about whom she knew in platformcatering circles.

‘What a Karen!’ I thought, grateful things hadn’t progressed between us.

I composed myself. Everyone in the café was staring intently at me. I persuaded myself they were in fact looking at the timetable screen above me.

Later on, I found out they had been staring at my full jam beard – thanks to Comuteebabes127, who was kind enough to tweet a photo of me, under the hashtag #mummy-can-i-have-somemore-jam? Top comment: ‘If anyone didn’t need something to make their face look odder.’ Most accurate comment: ‘It’s not the jam that’s funny. It’s the obliviousness to jam that’s funny.’

I caught my connecting train and slumped down in a seat. A poster opposite read, ‘If you see something on this train that doesn’t look right, please text the transport police.’

I should have contacted them and handed myself in.