Passengers didn’t share my love for beautiful rainbow

Iwas on a long train journey last week, kicking off a fraught weekend of hospital visiting and feeling quite stressed. It was a day of neverending showers, natch, until I glanced out of the window just as the most stonking rainbow appeared. It was a perfect child’s drawing of a rainbow, both ends clearly visible for pot of gold purposes, colours as bright as crayons. I was travelling alone and automatically turned to the other passengers in the packed train for a shared exclamation. Not one of them was looking up from a screen of some sort and I was suddenly unaware of the etiquette in such a scenario.

My instinct was to say “Look everyone, a lovely rainbow!” but I was aware that would make me sound like one of those people you don’t want to sit next to on a train.

It seemed selfish somehow to keep it to myself though, especially as I looked out again and could already see it fading slightly.

My inability to mind my own business and enjoy such a natural spectacle by myself may stem from the train journeys I used to take with The Toddler, in the days before she would plug herself in to music the minute we set off. We would while away the long journeys by one of us shouting manically at various intervals “Sheep! Cow! Tree!” or on boring stretches “Cloud that looks like a sheep/duck/tree!”

Of course, that was in the olden days before we had the option of watching screens instead.

The alternative to looking out of the window and playing I-spy usually involved colouring in or noughts and crosses, which is why anything that could be pointed to out of the window was such a welcome distraction.

A beautiful rainbow would have kept us busy for hours, what with trying to remember all the colours and the song and everything.

As I watched until the rainbow disappeared completely, I found myself feeling quite sad that no-one else had even noticed, let alone offered to recreate it in crayon form.

“

That was in the olden days before we had the option of watching screens instead