Platformification...

London-style scenes at Leeds Station (pictured left, at 19:23 and 37 seconds last night) as the Trans-Pennine Express's arrival was moved to another platform just as the train rolled into view, meaning we all had to leg it over a footbridge double-quick. A chap in a very small pin-stripe suit forced his way past me and I wasn't even moving slowly. How did I retaliate? Why, I stared into the back of his head and thought of all bad things that could happen to him, that's how. Who do I think I am? Harry Potter? Once on the train I ended up in a carriage with a bunch of squadies heading home for the weekend. They looked about 12 years old but kept talking about the funniest thing they had ever seen, which usually involved a story about a younger, spottier squaddie getting pissed on for not being able to bench press 50 times his own weight. Oh yes, that's funny. One of them had just won some prize for running up a mountain in 90 minutes. Another swigged from his can of Carling Black Label and spoke proudly of how he'd wanted to join the army since the age of four and so it's like a dream come true and how marching up and down and shooting guns had made him "more confident than all them wankers I went to school with." Then we got off the train and they couldn't work out how to get out of the station - all that orienteering training going to waste it seems. I looked about for the pin-striped suit man as I'd hatched a plan that I'd walk very slowly right in front of him but he couldn't be found. Damn.

Tags: Leeds, travel, army