I had looked like hell in the mirror a couple of hours earlier so I was certain that I looked equally as ill when I established myself at the end seat, opposite the luggage rack, on one of the front carriages of the train heading for Exeter St Davids. In spite of my fading Australian tan, my face managed to be a sick white with some red blotches – on cheeks and around my eyes – and a sort of purplish colour on my lips; I had a temperature and had long since taken off my coat and cardigan, although it must have been cold because it was a rainy day and everyone else wore a coat.

My palor and my cough had kept me in a kind of quarantine on the previous train, from Brighton to Salisbury; even though there were more passengers than seats, nobody attempted to sit next to me. At one point earlier on, when their were a few odd empty seats, but not together, an old couple boarded and sat behind one another on the aisle seats more or less opposite me.

“I’m sorry, I’m not well,” I said leaning forward, “I’d offer you this seat… but then I’d have to sit next to someone else and spread my infection.”

The old man stared at me searchingly and smiled.

“He doesn’t understand. We’re German,” his wife turned around with a knowing smile.

“And I have germs!” I perked up a bit.

I think the wife saw the funny side. She whispered to her mann and he nodded enthusiastically.

The Salisbury to Exeter train was a different kettle of fish; a plush new train, smooth, quiet and so warm that all abandoned their coats; there were plenty of vacant seats, lots of tables and loads of legroom, even in my preferred seat at the back where I had hoped not to disturb or be disturbed.

Too tired to read after my restless night, I plugged my earphones into my Kindle and began to listen to Candide, by Voltaire (the Kindle reader’s American high-school girl voice doesn’t do justice to French words and names but it was mildly amusing trying to make sense of the strange pronunciations). A few minutes later, at about chapter six – after Candide has been thrown out from the castle, fought for the Bulgarians, met up with his philosophy master who had been hung and left for dead, and reunited with the girl who had led to his being thrown out in the first place (Candide rows along very quickly) – the train guard came along and asked to see my ticket.

“I have a theory,” said the blue-eyed and smiley-faced Northerner, “I reckon that lovely skin has something to do with the water. Do you live in Torquay?”

“No, Dawlish, but I was born in Australia,” I dashed his theory.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying that you have lovely skin,” he continued without appearing too dashed.

Needless to say, I wasn’t offended at all and, before long I took the earphones out and closed the Kindle; in fact, I had perked up a bit.

The guard wasn’t so much handsome as full of fun. He did the odd bit of dashing off to click tickets, deal with queries and open doors for passengers, then he’d come back to my seat and perch on the edge of the seat next to me (I was by the window). He told me which are the best seats for the open-air opera at Verona, and the best place to go for a good beer in Bavaria; he spoke of the vineyards on the banks of the Rhine, near Lorelei Rock and knew the legend of Lorelei the mermaid siren. Occasionally, he burst into Italian and German. Germs and Germany again! But I felt a lot better.

“We like to travel,” I used the married we, to let him know.

“You’d be a great travelling companion. I’d love you to come to Verona with me,”  he said, “but your husband wouldn’t!”

A little before we arrived at Exeter St Davids station, the final destination for our beautiful new train, the guard came back to wish me goodbye. He gave me a peck on my now perhaps less pale cheek.

Chris was waiting for me at Dawlish station. He held me tightly in his arms and kissed me on my cheeks. We hadn’t seen each other for four days… but there were those germs. I told him about the nice guard who had cheered me up during the long journey.

“Let’s get you home. There’s a cauliflower-cheese ready for you…”

There’s no place like home. 

Penny, too. had a cold

Stones, stones, stones! Recently everything has been about stones! How peculiar!

On the train back from Brighton yesterday I picked up my Kindle for inspiration and spent a few minutes reading the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Fascinatingly, in 1658 the famous diarist was “successfully cut for the stone on March 26th” (my son’s birth date – no stones to date, happily!). Forty years later, after not a peep, the stones broke out again and were to trouble Pepys for the last three years of his life (upon post-mortem examination seven stones were found in his ulcerated left kidney). Then the guard came and I put my Kindle away…

In bed last night I was slightly bemused to read in the paper that Yoko Ono has lost a stone – or rather, had it stolen – from her interactive installation at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum. The much missed pebble, signed and bearing the words Love Yourself , was one of a number of stones, “worn by water and time” (aren’t they all?), on which Yoko had written small but presumably meaningful messages. Ah… How…  How vapid. And what happened to “Love thy neighbour”? If you’re going to write messages on stones, and value them at £12,400 each, surely there are better things to write; not to mention the fact that people around the world are still being stoned to death. But maybe Yoko has addressed that issue in her exhibition. I don’t know.

Oh Yoko

Then, of course, there are all those stones lost by dieters; in particular, a lady called Alison who has lost ten stones on the Juices+ Diet – my present diet. We’re modern – we are Online dieters. No, we don’t eat virtual food (although I used to say that I ate virtually nothing); we substitute two meals with shakes and eat a sensible meal once a day. I have been sticking to the new regime for just over two weeks and I’ve lost… No, not a stone worth £12,400 but mere pebbles in the region of five pounds!