Back then, it wasn’t a fresh snowfall that blocked the Perth-Inverness train at the Drumochter Pass: rather, it was very, very strong winds that sprang up and blew lying snow off the mountains, quickly smothering the track. These days, the winter weather forecasting is so good that those Scottish train services thought to be at imminent risk of snow blockage are cancelled in advance. But it wasn’t the case twenty-odd years ago.
Once trains ground to a halt in snow, they are very difficult to restart without digging. The driver tried to reverse, without success. The ticket collector walked through the train explaining that ‘the authorities had been notified’ and ‘help was on the way.’ He didn’t say that the heating system had also somehow been damaged, but the seventy passengers soon realised that was what had happened. It was half-past four in the afternoon and already dusk. The carriages would soon be freezing.
Alan stared unseeing out of the window. He tried, and failed, to avoid thinking about the hospital appointment that was due on January 5th. His feet already felt cold. Further down the carriage, a group of Highlanders, heading home for the New Year, had decided to begin Hogmanay three days early. The celebrations of strangers rarely gladden the hearts of bystanders and Alan’s gloom deepened. He dog-eared the page of his book (Herzen’s ‘Childhood, Youth and Exile’) and laid it aside. Dorothy, by his side, settled on distraction as the most suitable strategy. Tapping the Herzen memoir, she said, ‘If you were writing about your childhood, what would you start with?’
Her success was immediate. Alan turned and smiled: ‘Right now, I’m thinking that I’d start with the coal fire in the backroom when I was a toddler…’
‘…Dad would’ve laid and lit the fire before he went off to work. Mum would’ve parked me on the rug in front of the fire while she was busy in the scullery. She’d ‘ve given me a bit of paper and a crayon, or some wooden bricks, but far the most interesting thing in the room was that coal fire, flickering, smoking and spitting behind the fire guard.
‘You’d feel the friendly warmth on your face, the shining coal would be piled up like castle ramparts under siege. On dark days, the dancing flames would cast swaying shadows among the room furniture. Suddenly and unpredictably, a couple of coals would topple deeper into the grate, with a crash and a brief flurry of sparks. Sometimes, a single coal would erupt with a hiss and a thin stream of smoke spurting from the side of the coal. Then that eruption would ignite and, instead of smoke, there would emerge a single small flame of fire, burning more brightly than the rest of the fire, only to die quickly as the gas was exhausted.’
Dorothy smiled in turn. ‘Had you known it, that eruption of gas was a marker of the dangers that the miners faced in the pits.’
‘That’s true. As a toddler, I could see the twin slag heaps of Swadlincote from my parents bedroom window, but I didn’t connect them with coal-mines, or the coals in the grate. I thought coal came from the coal-cellar, a mysterious place with brick steps down to it, where mum kept the ginger beer plant.’
Dorothy ignored the false trail offered by the ginger beer plant. ‘We didn’t have a coal-cellar, we had a coal-house in the yard. The coalman had to carry the sacks through the sidegate to chuck ’em in the coalhouse. Mum used to take me out with her into the yard to count the sacks as they were emptied. Years later, I discovered that yard excursion wasn’t really to teach me arithmetic, it was to discourage the coalman from cheating on the delivery.’
Alan nodded. ‘The things you discover later on. That gaseous coal, I later discovered, was called “cannel-coal” because it burned like a candle. The miners would save it and use it to light the fire in the morning: You didn’t need paper and kindling- you just held a match to the bit of cannel-coal, and that would burn and fire the rest of the coal in the grate.’
Dorothy said suddenly, ‘Did you hear something outside the train, just then?’
‘Nope, too much Hogmanay Cheer taking place here inside. Dangerous things though, coal fires. Did you ever have a chimney fire?’
‘No, did you?’
‘Yep Apparently, I started one: feeding my wooden bricks into the fire over the top of the fire-guard.’
‘Wow, you’d be scared.’
‘Nope. I gather that I loved it. Til mum came in from the scullery.’
‘You know, I’m feelin’ warmer now, are you?’
Alan paused, wiggled his toes in his shoes, and smiled. ‘Yeah, me too.’
The train then jerked and began to move slowly backwards, to ragged cheers.
The pass of Drumochter seen from Drumochter by Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons – desolate hills in the snow with shadows on the hills.
literally stories 
Mick
The tone is lovely as always. The memories were perfectly inserted and no one made a “Donner’s Pass” joke, but maybe that would’ve been an American passenger.
I wonder how long must one be trapped without anything but water before she starts viewing fellow passengers as livestock? A week…ten days?
No matter, you show that civility is still interesting when, like all else, it is done right.
Leila
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Thanks, Leila. Afraid I couldn’t say how long it would take before I decided to eat a defenceless fellow-passenger. But I remember going hill-walking one time and only discovering at the summit that I forgotten to pack my sandwiches; by the time I got home I would’ve been ready to threaten serious damage to any friends and neighbours I encountered. Mick
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Lovely.
Great evocative imagery. Especially interesting how the coals and sparks and fire take center stage in the cold.
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Thanks, very pleased you liked it. Nothing prettier than a coal fire in a cold climate, I reckon. Pity I’m stuck with central heating. Mick
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A lovely heart warming (!) piece that brought back memories of helping my Nan light a coal fire (she would wrap newspaper into tight cylinders using a knitting needle and use that as kindling). Perfect in tone and just the right mid week ‘palate cleanser’ for these troubled days!
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Thanks, Steven. I too was taught how to prepare the newspaper for kindling! In my case, it was repeatedly following each sheet in a tight strip about an inch broad and then twisting the strip into a spiral. I like your Nan’s knitting needle ploy. Mick
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This is just a genuinely lovely story. It has a perfect tone and carries the reader along to the end wrapped in the prose. It is so very believable and realistic and feeds in little spots of information to add to the enjoyment. Thanks for this. – dd
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Thanks, Diane. Pleased you liked it. Excellent photo for the header: I knew the pass very well – brings back memories. Mick
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Beautifully written, Michael. I also v much liked the two step-backs in time – the setting, “twenty-odd years ago”, and then their reminiscences. And while it was perfect as is, I felt like it could have been an excerpt from a longer story, or a book – why has he a hospital apt, what is his and Dorothy’s relationship, Where are they going to begin with, where do they end up going when they go backwards, why did she ignore the ginger-beer plant ref. (Also – what *is* a ginger beer plant, and where can I get one??) I love a story which leave me with lots of questions.
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Thanks, Jess. Glad you liked it. I’m a bit vague on ginger beer plants; they were popular in my childhood, but I’ve not seen one since. They used a particular strain of yeast in water, and you one summer)added ginger power and sugar. You had to feed it with sugar periodically or it died (ours died while we were on holiday). I think it was kept in the coal cellar, partly for the coolness to slow it down and partly in case any of the bottles exploded. The latter happened many years later with my home-brewed beer: the result was local devastation. Mick
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Mick
This is a great story about the powers of story-telling itself. Also an excellent tale about the ways in which MEMORY fuels story-telling.
You write wonderfully in the “middle style,” which is both accessible and evocative. The way you paint the scene here in such few well-chosen words is truly excellent writing. It all becomes very vivid very quickly. The reader can SEE, but also FEEL the entire scene – an amazing job, and not easy to do, either.
The dynamics between the two main characters were both realistic and inspiring.
I loved the way the powerful woman was able to lead the man on into calmer pastures with her strong spirit and her subtle knowledge. I also loved the honest way the man is able to respond to the woman.
The dialogue between these two characters is vivid, real, priceless!
And, as so often happens in life, things do end up working out OK. If we all looked around us once in a while, we would probably see that 99 out of 100 times, things work out OK and are fine. Maybe that means that even in the worst of times (though it doesn’t feel like it), things will be OK.
A really vivid setting, great point of view, complex and living characters with great dynamics between them, and themes and meanings that are inherent in the tale, light, and also profound: “Warm Thoughts” is a joy to read. Thanks for writing this!
Dale
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Dale, your comments are an inspiration. Thank you. I find dialogue very tricky to write, so I’m pleased it worked this time. I think I’m coming to the view that half the trick with dialogue lies in the punctuation. Mick
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Michael
I enjoyed how the freezing train lead so seamlessly into youthful memories of coal fires and mining.
Our pasts mean so much, yet we seldom credit them — unless we’re in an odd circumstance or we’re moving to a new place and discover a box of old photos / letters that captures our youth. Memories aren’t always pleasant, but when they are told with honesty and style, always take us somewhere we need to be. Great job! — Gerry
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Thanks, Gerry. Hadn’t thought about it before, but I think you’re dead right: memories come flooding back under odd circumstances. Glad you liked it. Mick
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Very nice with charm that warmed us all til the train started moving again!
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Thanks, David. I always appreciate your comments. Mick
ps. No snakes on that train!
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Local note – out in the Columbia Gorge at the end of the Cascade Range of Oregon there is a Starvation Creek where a train got stuck. No one starved, but it was a possibility. Starvation Creek is in the same area as Mt. Defiance. Think I just did this. Men In Black don’t let me remember.
During my time in Kentucky we could gather coal that fell of a train for building a fire. In Oregon, we use or used the plentiful wood for a cheery fire.
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Thanks Doug. Yep, a lot of coal fell by the wayside. I used to burn ‘small coal’ in my stove – wee golf ball-sized lumps that had been recycled from old coal bings (‘bring your own sacks’),
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Alan and Dorothy’s memories took me back to the coal man hauling in a huge sack back when I was a kid….. he barely fit in the doorway, and outside the smell of burning coal early in the morning, and smog in the air.
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Thanks Harrison. A gentle reminder not to get too romantic about coal fires: smog was a killer in my childhood.
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Hi Mick,
You do this type of story beautifully. How you intermingle details, history, places and memoirs together is a skill very few can achieve.
I remember my mother being terrified when my grandfather would jam a shovel up against a newspaper page to ‘draw’ the fire. He would laugh when the paper caught fire, he’d grab it and with his two hands he would clap it out!
I tried that once, burnt my hands and my shirt cuffs!!
And I did cause a chimney fire (My mum nearly killed me!) I was having a few Blackheart Rums and their cockatoo spat some seed into it. I was a few sheets to the wind and didn’t think, just threw what was in my glass into the fire, you can imagine the rest!!
It’s always a pleasure to read your work my fine friend!!
Hugh
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Thanks, Hugh. Mention of coalfires seems to trigger a lot of memories. I too saw the effect of throwing a glass of spirits into a coalfire. It was one New Year when the party got a wee bit out of hand – everyone sobered up pretty quickly. Mick
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So much evoked with the lightest of touches. It does what the best poems can do. For me, that hissing bit of coal with its “thin stream of smoke spurting from the side…” was, is, to be transported to a time & place rarely thought about & suddenly made very close, a particular corner of carpet made almost painfully tangible. Seeming lightness, as I say, yet the most incidental observations carry a little extra weight with every reading: How the celebrations of strangers “rarely gladden the hearts of bystanders”; whereas a host of grim realities called up by Dorothy’s casual observation, “Had you known it, that eruption of gas was a marker of the dangers that the miners faced. . . ” I’ve never had to work down a mine & always paid too little heed to those living relatives of mine who did. A very fine read.
Geraint
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Thanks Geraint. I’m touched that my wee piece got you thinking about your miner relatives and the dangers they faced from gas explosions. Before I retired, I was fortunate to be allowed the time to listen to hundreds of audiotapes of miners’ memories recorded in the early 1970s and stored in The South Wales Miners’ Library in Swansea University. There are accounts there of disastrous gas explosions (like the Wattstown Explosion, audiotape 300), and of the efforts of the ‘workman inspectors,’ chosen by their fellow miners to inspect and enforce regulations to protect against gas (like W.C. Davies’ audiotape 188). Some of the interviewees (like Dai Dan Evans, audiotape 263) are spell-bindingly eloquent. Mick
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I absolutely adore this, the literal telling of warmth in the coming cold in what is a very prosaic situation. The joy of being together that is felt by the characters is superb. This is warm, honest, beautiful writing. It also remind me of a great Ali Smith short story about a woman who gets stuck on a train in Scotland somewhere, called ‘Lost’ – worth a look if you can find it (I think it’s in her collection Public Library and other stories’.
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Thanks Paul, sorry to be slow replying – only just picked this up. I’m touched by your kind enthusiasm – much appreciated. Also, I don’t know the Ali Smith collection at all – I’ll search it out. Mick
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