I am waiting for the platform to be announced.  Looking up at the parade of train names under the Departures sign.  Individual heads looking up, waiting.  For the same train, I think. There is a desk behind me, a help desk, a woman with a binder and a tatter or worn pages inside.  She is talking to a younger man standing beside her, both wearing the different shades of blue marking a transportee.
‘…if they’ve got the gift of the gab, they just talk and talk,’ he says.
‘And they’re just the worst.  The laziest, the most useless…’
A woman with a buggie walks up towards past the desk, stops.
‘For the 10:24 to Manchester, when will be able to board?’ Patient, innocent.
‘You’ll have to look at the departures board,’ the woman says stiffly. ‘It’s still getting ready.’
My platform is announced.  The stream of heads turn and start walking fast.  Several people are running.
On the ramp down, I remember the arc of a bird.  We were driving from Galway to Dundalk, a damp gray morning, a low gray car, deep shrubs lining the road.  A sparrow or starling made a slow, graceful glide over the hedge ahead of us, bouncing with a thud off the bonnet of the car.  It went upwards, higher than before, landing lightly on the road behind us.  It was ballet, dead.

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