Euston

It’s a tribute to how intensely dull and unevocative Euston station is that it triggered no memories on Saturday when I was there. Last time I travelled through Euston I was coming back from my Mother’s in Scotland, and three days before that I was going up as fast as I could, in a state of panic, because I’d had a call from her partner telling me that she’d collapsed.

It was a pulmonary embolism and I’m told she never woke up from that moment until she died five hours later.

We’re now two months after the event and just about everything else still reminds me. Teapots especially. My mother had 9 teapots, amongst many nice small pieces of Wedgewood, three Galileo thermometers, a radiometer, some brambly hedge stuff, her good china, collectors edition plates, and unusual coins. We’d laughingly had the discussion about what a nightmare it was going to be to clear all this out when she died, never dreaming it could be anything but 10 or 20 years away – or more.

She wasn't even 60.

Then there’s the New Scientist (she had a subscription) candy crush (I deleted it from my kindle because I couldn’t bear to see it in the menu carousel) certain books, adverts for Italian holidays, bottles of pernod on pub counters.  

But Euston station is impervious to nostalgia. Atmosphere slides off its square and scaffolded surface.  Even the art doesn’t seem suggestive of very much.