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On the Last Train Home
Notes from the 23:48, a moving country of the tired, the tender and the slightly drunk.
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The last train is its own nation, with its own citizens: the shift workers, the celebrants, the one man asleep against the window who the conductor will gently wake at the terminus. Nobody is at their best. Everybody is, somehow, kinder for it.
There is a temptation, writing about this, to reach immediately for the lesson. We have tried to resist it. The particulars are more interesting than anything they might be made to mean.
The remainder of the piece is below.
