Train-Trash

As I nuzzle into my window seat on the train home from a strenuously dreary day, I notice a wrinkled newspaper quietly perched beside me on the adjacent seat, its bold black font desperately staring up at me. Looking around for any claimers, I pick it up, and allow myself to browse through, taking my time so that it lasts the entire 20-minute stint back.

As I flick however, what stands out are not the endless articles that pass by my tired eyes in a haze of merged print, but the subtle signatures of human life tattooed upon its pages; the crossword, for example, has been partially completed in faded pencil and a brief scribble of an email address animates one crinkled corner. Another page has been brutally ripped in two- a smudgy fingerprint the only trace of the perpetrator- and on another, a joker has doodled all over the face of Gordon Brown.

My interest in the headlines starts to dwindle and I become lost in daydream wondering who else has picked up this very newspaper on this same dreary day. Perhaps it was the man of my dreams on his morning commute, gripping the pages momentarily with his tanned weathered hands as he briefly scans, before casually discarding it at Waterloo. Or perchance it was a lonesome fellow; one who attends to every line on every single page in hope that he might find something that inspires him.

Whoever it may have been, and however anonymous they may have felt, a little piece of someone’s existence has been captured. On our journeys to and fro, it strikes me that we will always, whether unknowingly or not, leave an imprint and on what better object than a newspaper; just think, your own little trace of existence can lie in something as simple as yet another crease on its front page, or one more number in it’s Soduku box.

In my eyes, newspapers do not document the news at all, rather, like secret love notes they reach out to, and bring together, hundreds of Londoner’s who all seem to live in fear of direct communication with one another. As you next come across a paper, either nudged between your seat, or flung in disarray over the floor, take a moment to think about how many others you are connecting with through your very finger tips, and, as you abandon it upon your seat, please, do leave it neatly.