My musings have taken me in a new direction – literally and figuratively.
I now ride the Metro in the middle of the day, travelling from one workplace site to another across the borough, and I disembark at a new station following a recent house move. It’s a period of change, not just in my personal circumstances, but in the very station I alight and disembark.
The sights of Percy Main, Meadowell and North Shields still feature in my narrative – but weekly rather than daily. Just a stop or three away, I feel horrendously far from the heart of my old town, and I’ve struggled with the menial three-mile difference. But home is bigger than bricks and mortar. It’s the feeling of seeing the Tyne Bridge when returning from ‘daaan saaaf’. It’s watching over St Mary’s from the left-hand side of a budget airline on the way back from your holidays. It’s the first sausage roll after landing in arrivals. And, of course, it’s a ride on the Metro. Despite the now palpable distance of where I once lived, Shields remains closer and more accessible than ever through our hearty Metro system.
Sometimes, when the train pauses at North Shields, I catch myself peering out, yearning for a bit of bother. There’s comfort in its familiar scuff marks, and I still get to watch the little radgies carefully storming the staircase whilst simultaneously trying to look round corners for the ticket checkies. Shields, like many other stations, has its own rhythm – a mix of gulls, gossip, and grit. You can’t take it out of me, no matter how many stops away I move.
And yet, for all the changes – in where I live, in how I travel, in the faces that fill the carriage – the Metro itself endures. The boards may creak, the ticket machines may groan and occasionally refuse you, and the autumn leaves spin past in a flurry of gold and rich reds, reminding me that nothing stays still. Seasons change, circumstances change, but some things stubbornly remain the same: the clatter of the wheels, the soft hum of voices, pensioners swapping tales louder than the brakes, and the eternal lottery of whether your ticket will print first time or get snatched by some chavved-up teen. The rest is pure Metro theatre: a kid taking his life in his hands by hopping onto the roof like he’s starring in an action film, a Canada Goose-riddled girl strutting around like she could take Tyson in a ten-rounder, and the guy with a bike who thinks it’s hilarious to play catch with the train doors. And yet, through all the chaos, the boarding disasters, the flurries of autumn leaves outside, the Metro carries on as do we – creaky, unpredictable, sometimes terrifying but always familiar.
