Failure to Leave

by Iain Lowson

When the skies went dark at four o’clock, I knew I wasn’t getting home.

I was in a waiting room at Newcastle’s Central Station. The Perspex windows were peppered and obscured in seconds by the horizontal rain. It was driven right into the station by a howling wind that came out of nowhere and threatened to push prospective passengers clean onto the slick tracks. A second later, the sky above the Victorian building exploded and I began to grin.

I love storms. Had I been at home, or at the very least unencumbered by bags stuffed with new books, I’d have skipped out into the downpour. The thunder heralded one of the biggest storms I’ve been witness to outside of the US. It was all very appropriate for a Thorsday. The God of Thunder (and Loreal) was about to give Newcastle a right kicking.

Lightening started and, right on cue, the trains in the station and many of the concourse lights went dark. The wind had died down abruptly, smothered perhaps by the phenomenal volume of water that, measured by the megaton, nuked the city seemingly from low orbit. It was the only way to be sure that nothing moved, save for the torrents heading Tyne-ward.

Outside, in the streets at the bottom of the hills leading down to the river, drains blasted twenty-foot plumes into the slate-grey skies. Inside the station, things were getting silly. The guttering and old iron drain pipes, left as a legacy by the Victorian station designers, never stood a chance. Where the main station roof sections met, held up by graceful iron rods topped with swirling floral metalwork, great curtains of rainwater were coursing down.

Those of us huddled in the waiting room were driven out, the ‘roof’ there proving to be as decorative as those on the food kiosks and cafes elsewhere. One by one they were closing for fear of electrocution. At the main entrance, with its dramatic stone pillars that block the natural movement of people entering or leaving, the towering doors were soon closed. Water quickly rose to ankle height. It couldn’t get any deeper as the natural drain of the steps down to the Metro underground station gave some ease to those of us at ground level. I shudder to think what subterranean travellers had to cope with.

The British are an odd breed, and cope simultaneously badly and magnificently with weather-generated adversity. No one was dry. Everything was now measured in degrees of damp. Many of us, already resigned to not getting anywhere quickly, settled down to enjoy the madness. The station staff did what they could, but their initial duty was to make the station safe. Tape went up, strung in yellow and black garlands between support pillars, warning the soggy souls who leapt over it or snuck under that they were about to get even wetter. Brooms came out to sweep water away, to cheers and applause, out into the street or down onto the tracks. Trains continued to arrive, some returning to Newcastle having been blocked on their travels by landslides or great lakes of run-off. Others were arriving from the untroubled South, where they’d been told (despite wide reporting to the contrary) that there were no problems and trains were running just fine.

A few folks were having a wee cry, scared by the continuing fireworks from above and by the possibility of being stuck in a city they knew nothing about. One very girly-girl was sobbing because she couldn’t get to a party in Carlisle. She was comforted by a stalwart old-dear. They discussed dogs while the girlie-girl sobbed and repeatedly pleated and un-pleated her hair. Meanwhile, true to British form, a clearly moneyed old bloke was stomping about demanding someone get him home – it was their duty, dammit!! Bemused staff, standing with him in the Central Station lake, had to listen while he complained about the network collapsing every time there was ‘a little bit of rain’. Still, the scared old codger didn’t have enough hair to pleat and didn’t look like the sobbing type. Blinkered railing against the railways was his only option.

At around six o’clock, the storm let fly another bombardment of artillery and flares. This seemed to egg on the clutch of track-suited miscreants who had appeared from the mysterious land beyond the station walls. Their merry intent to enjoy the discomfort of others, to prey on the unwary, and to wind up the staff was swiftly squashed by the intervention of a number of grim-faced police officers.

I can only assume both parties had walked to the station. The roads beyond were gridlocked. Floods all around the area had drowned cars and houses. Lightening had hit the great metal edifice of the Tyne Bridge, while YouTube footage of one spectacular strike and of the floods saved the news film crews from having to get out of their beds. Though property damage was extensive, no one in Newcastle or Gateshead was killed.

Back in the station, and despite the clichéd ‘Blitz spirit’ that prevailed, there was one moment when I did question whether humanity deserved to be allowed to continue. One bloke did make me wish that the storm was merely the beginning of an all-cleansing flood. It wasn’t fair. I was on the verge of escaping the station unscathed, heading for a very comfortable night in a hotel. Instead, I took a heinous hit.

I was standing in an inevitable queue, one of several that spontaneously formed whenever a member of staff stood still for even a moment. (Brits; in a panic over the weather? Form a queue for instant order and relief!) In front of me was a middle-aged lady who, like myself, was somehow enjoying the whole experience. In front of her was a spectacular onanist.

He stood slightly shorter than me. His hair, bought for purpose, was the lightly tousled light brown to blond of a true adventurer. He wore a leaf-green t-shirt that was the calculated size too small to allow his off-the-shelf sculpted physique to be shown off to best purpose. His combat shorts did the same for his well-muscled legs. The walking sandals were, thanks to clever design and production, well worn looking. He had a designer-scruffed rucksack at his feet. He was most manly, most manly indeed.

He looked around himself, nodding in a satisfied way, all the time hoping to catch the eye of someone. Anyone. He had something to say. Caught unawares, the lady in front of me was too slow. He locked eyes with her. With an oft-practised smirk and a studied flickered eyebrow, he let loose a mocking chuckle before nearly destroying my faith in Humanity.

“Of course, I got stuck in Egypt once” he said in plumy tones. He looked around again, nodding all the time. Glancing back at his baffled victim, he spoke again. “It was much worse than this.” With a pantomime scoffing laugh that emphasised each syllable of the scripted ‘ha ha haaah’, he turned away.

His victim and I shared a glance wherein we each used the same sighed, unspoken word;

Wanker…