A childhood of trains and toy guns

I went trainspotting once. It was the summer holidays and I must have been seven or eight.

We were hanging about, wondering what to do with the day, when somebody suggested we try this exotic pastime they’d seen in a comic.

(In those days, comics were not full of Americans with super powers and emotional issues, they were filled with ordinary, if disaster-prone, boys and girls whose few emotional issues could be cured by a large plate of mashed potato with sausages stuck in it.)

So anyway, there was a railway line half a mile or so away, with a bridge conveniently placed over it, under which we assumed trains must pass.

So we filled some empty lemonade bottles with tap water, rustled up a pencil and a jotter and wandered off to spot some trains.

( Yes, on our own, no questions asked. Happy days.)

We stood on that bridge for quite some time. This wasn’t long after the Beeching cuts, so that might have had something to do with the lack of trains.

Anyway, for some time we

You didn’t have to keep fit. Life just kept you that way

looked at a railway line and talked nonsense to each other. Then a train came. One of the old blue suburban-line electric ones. It appeared round the bend, shot under the bridge and disappeared to who knows where. Or possibly Queen Street.

We looked at each other. We had all seen it. We had successfully spotted a train. So now what? What were we supposed to write?

We settled on the time, the colour and the direction, then decided it wasn’t much of a hobby and walked back home where we ran about killing each other with pretend machine guns till our mothers decided to feed us.

And that, dear readers, is how we got exercise and fresh air in the olden days. Never did any of us feel the need to take up sport to keep fit. You didn’t have to keep fit. Life just kept you that way. And organised sport meant sadistic gym teachers.

So when sports like badminton moan about losing funding, I don’t join them in fearing for the wellbeing of our young people. They’d be better off trainspotting.

Ewan McGregor’s even done it twice.