An overweight woman and her even more overweight husband were trying to make it to the train before the doors closed. The man was closer to me than his wife who was several metres further down the platform. She was sweaty and out of breath.
‘Run!’ he shouted to her. ‘Come on, run! Run!’
I got level with the man at about the same time as his wife did. I was near enough to hear him when he leaned close to her ear and said in a low voice: ‘You can’t run can you? Look at the state of you.’
The blonde woman in the long black coat clacked along the platform in stilettos. In one hand she pulled a shiny suitcase on wheels, in the other, a lead attached to a tiny Yorkshire Terrier with gleaming fur and a bow on its collar. It was the kind of dog you normally see carried and cooed over – something you’d expect to be called ‘Precious’ or ‘Bitsy’.
As the woman reached the open door of the train, she lifted the case aboard, stepped up a foot or so onto the carriage and yanked the dog behind her by its neck.
The man on the opposite platform was in his 60s. He wore smartly pressed suit trousers and an overcoat buttoned up to the neck against the cold. As soon as he saw the London train approach he grabbed his holdall and ran over the bridge to my side of the station. It pulled in as he clattered past me, skidding on the ice in his shiny business shoes. There were lots of carriages and he fished a huge camera out of his bag as he ran but the train pulled away just before he had time to photograph its number.
