Out of the blue

About this time last year, I put on my shorts and trainers and drove towards the gym. As I travelled through the first village from home, I asked myself the question, “Why are you going to the gym on the most pleasant day of the year, so far?” Snowdrops and crocuses were out and the daffodils were on their way. It was dry and sunny and though there was still a slight chill in the air, I would soon warm up on my bike, even in just a sweater. I turned the car round and started my daily exercise regime again, this time on two wheels.

Then I remembered that the main road was closed for repairs – almost certainly to fill in some of the pot holes, which have become an ever-present feature of the landscape around here in recent times. So that would be why this country lane is so much busier than normal, I muttered to myself.

Further progress was halted by two cars stopped adjacent to each other in the road. They were facing different directions and their drivers were engaged in earnest conversation. Surely not road rage here, I thought, looking to see if I could squeeze round on either side to make my get-away from the scene before I became embroiled as a witness to any possible assault. I always look on the bright side at times like this. There was no way past. The young man with his girlfriend in the smaller car that was facing me was behaving very reasonably. He had not raised his voice, but the older man, who was on his own, with his Volvo Estate sprawling across most of the road and who had clearly, from his current position, made no real effort to move over in the first place to enable the two of them to pass each other, was clearly trying to put him on the spot. “I drive it every day,” I heard the young man reply, defensively and as indignantly as he could without sounding unnecessarily provocative. After we had all been sitting there for a further couple of minutes, including me on my saddle, the girl friend noticed me waiting and the young man suddenly reversed a few yards rather jerkily and I was allowed to escape. I left them to it. There was no sign of them when I returned that way some twenty minutes later. I looked down for noticeable patches of blood on the road but there were none.

I regained the trail, the old railway line that provides me with such a convenient traffic-free outlet from home. I sailed down the access road to the car park next to the old station house. A family group walked towards me; father, mother and grown-up son, at a guess. They had clearly just left their car and were all zipping up their jackets in unison, as they turned into the, by now, cooler breeze. All were looking down at their feet and it struck me that none of them saw me passing them, apart from their dog, as I free-wheeled along in the opposite direction.

Within seconds I heard the father shout, “Haaart goooin on’t baark?” I braked and turned to face him, as his voice had reached me easily over the intervening twenty yards or so and I had sensed that he had already turned around just after I had passed him. Interpreting this as, “Are you going on your bike?” or even, “It is hard going on your bike,” I did not have a chance to respond before he had spun back round to the rest of the family, adding, “Suuh quiet, yuuh carn-ardly ’ear um.” I thought it best not to stop and begin a conversation about looking where you are going and decided retrospectively, that a little tinkle on my bell had probably been called for. I offered him a belated wave and a smile but neither was reciprocated and I proceeded homewards.

I’ve noticed that most cyclists on the trail now either give a little “ping” on their bell to walkers approached from behind, or else they make a comment to let them know they are there, like “Coming past,” or “On your right,” or just, “Good morning,” and uttered sufficiently early to act as a polite warning of the intention to pass when out of the normal line of sight, all of which makes good sense to me and with which I would also usually comply. My failure on this occasion was not to notice in time that all three of the people walking towards me had failed to register my existence at all.

I made it safely home with no further trauma and sat out of the wind in my garden for half an hour to enjoy a bit of low-level vitamin D. I took outside with me the copy of “The Railway Paintings of Don Breckon,” which my wife had given me for my birthday and then I turned back time. From the detailed introduction by Roger Malone, I got an immediate understanding of how thoroughly Don Breckon studied his subject matter prior to lifting up his brushes, with many field study sketches, not just of bridges, stations and trains but of figures in different poses, tractors, seagulls and trees. In other words, it was an indication of the attention he paid to the whole scene and not just the locomotives.

It is well known that Don Breckon’s work is highly rated in the railway fraternity. The prices reached by his paintings are as high as for anyone. They are very sought after. He gets it right from a railway point of view, in the sense that the locomotives are accurately represented from a technical perspective, but there is much more to it than that.

He also manages to create a convincing ambience with detailed settings and the appropriate inclusion of people, not just as add-ons or background figures but animated players who are part of the composition. It is the inter-action between the scene and its inhabitants that is one of the most endearing features of much of his work. It might be a claim too far to say that they tell a story, but they offer the on-looker an opportunity to step into another world and then make up their own tale. Nostalgia it certainly is - but based on such closely observed detail and a clear empathy for those so deliberately chosen to start the story off.

It conjures up a lost world without road rage and disharmony, where neighbourliness triumphed and where folk had time to stop and chat when they met on a country lane, rather than argue over right of way or make negative asides about fellow wanderers. Sadly, Don Breckon died in 2013. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for some time. His work lives on as a reminder of an age that we like to think of as being a bit different in its values - but maybe even that is a bit of wishful thinking, too.

[Based on an article written initially for the Railway Antiques Gazette]