Once, when I was a much younger man, I was sitting aboard a train from Loch Ness to Fort William in the Scottish highlands. I sat opposite a woman. She was of a quintessentially younger vintage than I, for people familiar with my history of such things. Our train was scheduled to depart soon. It was on time. Unusually, we were early.
She was, as we sat waiting, the parchment upon which I had inscribed my current hopes and dreams. That particular parchment, with a ream of others, have since been folded along other challenging and cathartic corrugations into “Life Experience,” that most legendary of origami swans. This is the way of parchment.
She mentioned that she was hungry, for fruit she thought. I offered to take care of it, enthusiastically. I did this because though history would soon show that at that very moment our lives were in a protracted process of going swan-shaped, they had not gone swan shaped yet.
I recced the task in my head. Fifteen minutes to departure, kiosk in the station (2 minutes walk). Up, back, get some fruit. No apples and pears in sight. Too easy.
Brownie points, incoming. Break out the gold stars.
I jogged briskly (I was thirty-one) over to the kiosk and asked the lady at the stall which fruit she had.
It’s only now: older, wiser and having spent more time in Scotland that I realise how staggeringly presumptuous that question was.
I didn’t ask whether she had any fruit. I didn’t even ask if she had a single piece of fruit. I didn’t even have the self-awareness or humility to be apologetic when I did it. No.
I asked which fruits she had. I may as well have swanned up in a top-hat and tails.
“Hello there train lady. Would you get me out of a slightly sticky spot and show me your current selection of fresh produce. Don’t overwhelm me with choice though, so no grapefruits and no melons. And nothing out of season!
And if we could hurry it along a bit, I have a train in ten minutes time. Tick-tock.
Platter or hat? Good question. Hat please, I’ll treat the lady. Pip pip.” Meanwhile, back on Earth.
“There’s nae fruit, love.”
“No fruit?!” I exclaimed. My face contorted the way a person who wasn’t an idiot’s should have done if instead of fruit, she’d said she didn’t have Irn Bru, shortbread or pork scratchings.
Then, by way of explanation, she added possibly the most Scottish thing I’ve ever heard.
“We tried that. It did’nae work.”
That’s exemplary Protestant wisdom right there, worthy of Scotland’s great enlightenment history.
Scotland is a capitalist country. You can’t pour pound after pointless pound into putrefaction. It’s not a profitable proposition.
The truth is, that there isn’t always money in the banana stand. It’s Caledonia, not California.
Looking back now, I know why I was surprised too. But I didn’t at the time.
I thanked the lady and walked back, empty handed to my lady friend on the train. I recounted this story, we shared the pork belly scratchings and Ian Bru I’d bought in lieu of real food, and we laughed about the ridiculousness of life. It was nice. It was fun.
The train pulled out of the station, and carried us with it. Over viaducts, past a litany of purples beyond your imagining.
Us? We continued offering an unnecessarily wide selection of fruits to ambivalent customers. Eventually growing frustrated at this, we’d sometimes try a different tack: screaming obscenities, throwing tomatoes and finally forcing the fruit down the other’s throat.
Until one day, we didn’t. We tried that. It didnae work.
Yianni Agisilaou - 8 July, 2022