If a tree falls on the train line.

The events in the below story all took place in this very small and weird world, on January 27th, 2025. I first wrote this account on January 29th, 2025, at 8:22am. I then performed an edited version of it at the Hastings Writers Workshop's first ever Story Club event - where it got more laughs than expected from a very kind audience.

I want to write all the details down now, before I inevitably forget. After it happened, I texted one of my closest friends to say ‘I want the record to show…’ and added an anchor emoji because I thought, wouldn’t it be amazing to someday scroll back through our starred messages on WhatsApp to find me, marking a time, putting a pin - a literal anchor - in this beautiful bizarre moment? This obscenely fortuitous meeting. This meet cute.

this is *that* notebook.

It was a Sunday and I was on my way to a particular small town in Dorset, for work. Second time in a week. I’d been summoned for a meeting with The Big Man, and while I wasn’t super excited about the prospect of another 4-hour train journey and two nights spent in a neon green hotel the other side of the shopping centre rather than my usual luxurious spot on The Quay, I was happy to be on the move and making things happen. That was my January energy; overscheduling, not overthinking. Barely any thinking.

That morning I’d woken up in Brighton and been for a rainy coffee with my friend. I was waiting a while as she’d apparently been arguing with her partner about their upcoming move to a bigger place – the wheres and whens were getting a bit much. I didn’t mind. In the time spent waiting, I’d formed situational friendships with the Gen Z baristas – an all-female team, all of them with dyed hair, excessive jewellery and tattoos, just my kind of people – asking for their recommendations when they asked me which beans blend I wanted in my long black. I’d bantered with my fellow customers and caffeine dependents about which seat was best placed near the heaters and away from the draughty door on this miserable day.

My friend eventually turned up, and we chatted about naughty things over our respective brews for a couple of hours. She had a lot of milk in her tea. It was probably the longest amount of time we’d spent together, fully clothed. 

I lost track of time somewhere along the way, which was unlike me; I always like to have one eye on the clock and/or the National Rail app, assessing my options and plotting snack stops between trains. Eventually when our chats were wrapping up, I had a quick scroll and decided to get the 14:10, as that gave me half an hour to grab a packed lunch. When I got there I was dismayed to discover that they didn’t have any of my favourite vegan sarnies in the fridge, but I made do with a couple of pretend sausage rolls and a bag of broken seaweed bits. Nothing was upsetting me that day, I noticed. The wobbly and wavy bus ride, the wind and rain, the late friend, the lack of sandwich options - all of them slid off my back. I didn’t even mind hauling my suitcase up the steep, damp tunnel to the station, for the second time in a week. I did mind, however, the length of the upcoming connection from Clapham Junction. I stared at the app incredulously once I boarded at Brighton - three hours and ten minutes. Outrageous. I texted my parents to rant, which I had gotten into the habit of doing since moving in with them temporarily after a heartbreak some months ago; they both agreed, it was a stupidly long slog I had ahead of me. 

So obviously when I got into Clapham Junction, a gaunt and wretched place where I’ve shed a lot of tears in the past decade, I was delighted to find a train just eight platforms away that was not only leaving earlier, its particular slog was half an hour shorter. I ran from six to fourteen – or was it fourteen to six? The details are already falling out of my head, even as I write them down. 

The doors stopped right in front of me. I always say that’s a good sign. I do the little look over my shoulder at my fellow prospective passengers on the platform, we all pump our fists inside our pockets, congratulate each other with silent smiles. Still breathless from the run along the old grey mezzanine, heart still pounding from swinging my suitcase down the stairs, I wasn’t picky about where I sat. I didn’t even make a note of where the toilet was - something I always do as trains pull in, or as I awkwardly walk through in search of a seat. I wedged my bulky belongings on the high shelf and landed heavily beneath, taking a moment to huff and puff before pulling out my book. As the train started moving, I realised I was going backwards. Strangely, I didn’t mind. I didn’t immediately look for an alternative forward-facing option, as I normally would have done. I wasn’t sure why, at the time. 

I also wasn’t sure when I clocked him, but it must have been after Woking. Just across the aisle, in the window with an open khaki bag on the seat next to him that was big enough to hold half a life inside, but actually appeared to be half empty. Messy curls tickling his ears, creeping down his neck. I hadn’t believed auburn was a real colour until then. It was like a mixture of bleached gold and hot spice. His cheeks were pink, eyebrows thick, and a moustache dusted his lip. As I watched, probably unsubtly, he took a tin from his bag and started fiddling with its contents. A thin, rectangular retro OXO tin, a bit battered - surely it contained tobacco. I’m only slightly ashamed to say I admired it. I thought he was cool. At one point he tied a red handkerchief around his neck, and tucked it under the collar of his denim shirt. I drank it all in, and adjusted myself as I did so - I turned my back more towards the window so I was in a more diagonal view, not side profile, and rolled my sleeves up to show hints of ink. Tucked the straggling ends of my overgrown fringe behind my ear. I was already reading, not performatively, but I perched the book a little more upright on my knee. 

It was like turning a dimmer switch. I saw him see me, from under my fringe - yes, it had come untucked immediately. He looked over a few times before we caught eyes and smiled. I noticed he had books, too - one on his lap, another on the big yawning bag. Both looked thin and worn, well-loved, borrowed or perhaps passed on from someone else. We kept catching eyes, exchanging knowing smiles, enjoying the in-between across the aisle. 

Then the train stopped. It got stuck at Basingstoke, we’d later find out because of a fallen tree on the line, and the conductor made an announcement over the speaker that we were not moving for a while, so if anyone wanted to ‘stretch their legs’ or ‘get some fresh air’ they were welcome to step out onto the platform for a moment. He said he was going to stand outside carriage eight of ten, and swore he wouldn’t let the train leave us behind. 

There was the opportunity. This auburn-haired pink-cheeked guy and I had a sudden pause to speak within. We grinned at each other during the announcements and rolled our eyes, apparently at the universe. He then tucked a rollie behind his ear, leaned over in his seat and asked if I had a lighter. I was sorry to let him down. Said maybe the conductor would be able to help, as he sounded so empathetic over the tannoy? We laughed, and he stepped off in hope. While he was gone I took a photo of his bag on its seat, though I wasn’t sure why. 

Less than ten minutes later he was back, shoulders wet and smelling thickly of smoke. Like a walking cloud. I asked if he was successful. He smiled and sighed, ‘thank goodness for human kindness’. 

I thought I’d stopped finding smokers sexy. I realised at that moment that I was, unfortunately, very wrong.

So, we sat. We talked. He told me about his love for antique tins, how he low key hoarded them, but not in a weird way. He described himself as ‘professionally homeless’, because he worked on boats and moved with the tides in more ways than one. He’d driven pirate ships, sailboats, motorboats, and was often away for weeks at a time doing this. Right at that moment he was en route to Southampton Docks, where he’d eventually ferry over to the Isle of Wight to complete a final month of a course to qualify in…? What was it? Boating? Sailing? Something. 

As he spoke, I found myself smiling, leaning half my face into the worn orange fuzz of the seat next to me like an utter moron. That easy grin matched the gentle eyes, although I could see wicked sparks dancing behind both. I knew it wouldn’t take much, he’d lollop and lick like an excitable oversized pup given half the chance. I wondered if he was the mythical Golden Retriever energy everyone is always on about. His colour scheme certainly aligned, so maybe? 

I felt myself getting higher the more we talked. The more I absorbed his warmth, and answered his questions about me. I heard giggles bubbling out of me and wondered what the other passengers surrounding us in this stationary half-full carriage must be thinking if they’d tuned into our chats as the heavy rain lashed the windows. I hoped they were all wearing headphones.

It turned out he knew where I was from. In fact, he’d studied in Hastings for a year - illustration, how fun. He said it was a while ago, 2018 - ‘when I was twenty-eight’ he added, which was a great way for him to subtly inform me that we are only three years apart in age. He’s originally from Kent, near the small village I only know of because of their quirky independent cinema, housed in an old town hall-slash-church. How funny.

‘How funny,’ I found myself then saying aloud, ‘you’re from there, I’m from there, and we’re both meeting on a train going to completely different places on the other side of London - for our respective jobs,’ I trailed off. ‘Isn’t that fun?’

Because it is, isn’t it? It’s so fun, and fortuitous. Imagine if I hadn’t had that extra cup of coffee with my friend in Brighton, or planned to get the first train to Clapham at a time that allowed me to grab a non-existent sandwich from the Whole Foods place? Or if I’d not checked my app, angry as I was about the timings of my trip, and chanced a sprint from one platform to another in the space of four minutes - if I’d actually decided no, I simply cannot sit this way round, I need to move to a forward-facing seat further down the train, and clunked my suitcase along arm rests until I found somewhere suitable. At that moment I really believed in fate, really and truly and wholeheartedly, for the first time in years. I’d been attributing things to the all-knowing universe recently, but Fate had eluded me ever since I’d walked into a cafe at the right time, on the right day, some years ago. I think she’d gotten scared, stumbled away in her broken sparkling heels and evaded me with smoke and mirrors in the meantime. 

The universe sent me messages when I was determined to miss them. Fate was the one who made the coffee taste so good and my friend arrive late; she stirred the storm up and made the tree fall so our train would stop. I believe that. Foolish though I may seem. 

I’d mentioned somewhere along the way in the conversation that I’d studied Drama with Creative Writing - ‘right here, actually’, I’d quipped with a jerked thumb out the darkened window as we went through Winchester. Yes, hooray, we were finally on the move once again but drawing ever closer to the end - Southampton Central. He asked if, as a writer, I kept notebooks on my person, and I said yes, I love a good scribble. He said he did too. We’d already spoken about the books we liked to read, and he’d recommended me a song based on the title of the novel I had in my lap, ‘Adelaide’; he revealed that he was indeed reading poetry, that he preferred it to longer books as it meant he could dip in and out and be taken away as was convenient to him. I mentioned that I’d met a friend of mine (who I’d been on a date with the previous week, but I didn’t include that part) a couple of years ago in a pub garden and his opener was asking me if I’d write him a haiku in a notebook he produced from his coat pocket. He said he would always ask people, friends and strangers, to do this for him if they’d been talking for some time and the vibe felt right. To this day, he claims it’s the best one he’s ever received in that notebook is mine. So then we, me and this meet cute man, spent a while trying to work out the rules of the haiku, the structure of one - was it seven five seven, or five seven five? Eventually I pulled my phone out and looked it up. 

He passed me his notebook, and asked if I’d do him the honour. I said Okay, but only if you write me a poem, too? And I handed him my tattered patterned notebook; my birthday present to myself, purchased at the V&A, last year and in another lifetime. 

Obviously I wrote my name and phone number at the top of the page. Obviously. What do you take me for? I then said we could wait until we got off the train to read each other’s offerings, he agreed, as he said he felt self-conscious as he was writing and worried it would be no good. 

I wrote: We were paused briefly / We aren’t yet at the airport / We have all the time.

Then before we knew it - although we definitely knew it - Southampton Central was announced as the next stop. As he gathered his things, pulling on a navy jacket and tucking the poetry books into the khaki bag which was now almost definitely half full, he kept smiling at me and then said ‘aww, I kind of don’t want to get off’. He laughed quietly, I assured him I was also upset that he had to go now, because hadn’t we had a lovely time? The other passengers started stirring around us, standing up and queueing in the aisle, when he asked me ‘do you have Instagram?’

I nodded and took his phone when he presented it, but I hesitated before typing my handle into the search bar because… it felt like a giveaway. In that moment I realised, too much of myself is on there, that tiny app in the ether, my past and present tangled up in its algorithms and under a blinding spotlight. I must do something about this feeling, I thought to myself. I need to address it, and maybe curate things a little better. Be more authentic. 

We shook hands. ‘Eric*,’ he said. ‘Grace,’ I replied. He hugged me and kissed me on the cheek - a proper kiss, not a peck - as the other passengers hovered around us and then the doors started beeping and he was gone, but not quite gone, not before he waved through the window from the platform in the evening light. Well, I say ‘light’, it was dark outside - but he was a golden hour. 

I read his poem when I was alone in the hotel room that night. His handwriting was slanted, and every letter capitalised. He’d drawn an accompanying picture, a sailboat drifting towards the horizon - or it could have been a melting candle under the sun. The last line written was ‘I may see you again’. 

blurred, hurried poetry.

*names changed to protect the innocent arseholes who then went on to string me along for a month with romantic poetic messages, and then ghosted me for the entirety of March, only to then return without any comment, contact or explanation, and soon post an IG story having dinner and wine with a pretty lady who wasn't me. Once this post is published, they'll be blocked. I think the reason this story got such a good reception when I read it aloud was that everyone in the room knew something I didn't. They saw what would happen, and admired my hope and belief in childish romantic fantasy.

Thank you for reading,

G. x