‘A train passes here at 95 miles an hour at these times, whether you’re on the tracks or not.’ And then there was a list of times. Derek read the sign with some amusement and then as a secondary thought, checked his watch. It was 3.20pm. He looked up at the sign again and noticed that the closest time was 3.30pm.

I wonder if these times are accurate, he asked himself and then was startled by a voice from the car behind him. He turned.

“Dad, dad, aren’t you going to come back?” It was his 12-year-old son, Jeremey. He smiled and waved to his car which had not only his son in it, but his 10-year-old daughter, Agnes and his wife, Jennifer. He looked back at the sign and then returned to the car. He got into the driver’s seat, closed the door and looked at his wife. She wasn’t looking at him but instead into the distance, way beyond the railway crossing.

“It’s 3.20pm,” he began,

“3.21,” his wife corrected him.

Each day after he finishes school, Pradeep Saxena goes straight home where he gives his mother a quick kiss on her cheek, pats his dog Lucy and then runs upstairs to begin his homework.

His sister Rita, always complained to their mother that Pradeep never came to say hi to her. “Ma!” she would say, “it’s as if I don’t exist in this world.”

Pradeep’s mother would assure Rita that she did indeed exist, and that Pradeep was on a mission when he got home. To that point, their mother would take Rita by the hand and walk her reluctantly into Pradeep’s room, where they found him hard at work tackling a maths problem. She would clear her throat pretentiously, causing Pradeep to roll his eyes and turn to face them.

“Ma!” he would say, “I have to finish my work before I can leave to go down to the station and every second counts.”

Jeremy pushed open the door, the bell sounded. Two men sitting against the back wall both reading the same kind of magazines looked up, looked at each other and went back to their pastime. Jeremy felt uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what to do next, so he remained standing there.

A couple of excruciating and painful minutes later, the slightly older one of the two men looked up but didn’t say word. Jeremy did. “I need a haircut please.” The two men looked at each shrugged their shoulders and went back to their magazines. Must be new editions, thought Jeremy, obviously more important than business. He remained standing waiting for one of them to reply.

Finally, the slightly younger of the two said, “did you read the sign on the glass?”

At the tender age of 11, Jaswant Singh should’ve been in school. Instead, he rose early each morning, before the others in his house and got ready for a day’s work.

He missed school. He loved being in the room with his new teacher Yashwant Rao who had returned from America where he had been a successful entrepreneur and had given up his entire life to return to India. Yashwant had received a great education at the leading boarding school in India, after which he had gained entry to the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, where he excelled in electrical engineering. He went on to get his Masters at a premier institution in the US, before getting a high flying job at one of the largest high tech companies in Silicon Valley.

But there had always been something missing in Yaswant’s life. He wasn’t quite sure what it was. But it all came together when he returned to his village in the Punjab one very hot summer. He paid a visit to the school where he had first become interested in maths and physics. All the current students had been told that someone famous was going to visit them, so they had to make sure they looked their best, “for this most famous man who is going to come to talk to us,” Jaswant Singh told his mother and father. “Maybe I too can become famous like him.” He sincerely meant it.

“Ah, the Barcarole!” James smiled as he turned the corner onto New Bond Street and heard the music float in his direction. It had been quite a while since he last walked down that street. It reminded him that he had been away from London for about four months at Officer Candidate School in Aldershot. His smile grew wider as he approached the corner of Oxford Street where Douglas, the organ grinder, had stood guard for years in all kinds of weather. He got a glimpse of James and for a moment he didn’t recognise him in an officer’s uniform. The last time he had seen James, he was wearing what all poor university students wore, a shirt many too sizes big for him tucked into a pair of hand me down slacks and a large overcoat. But it was his smile. His unmistakable smile that gave him away.

Derek loved trains as a child. In fact, he had loved trains all of his life. As far back as he could remember he enjoyed watching trains, building toy trains, and playing with a train set when he was all of two years old, even though he didn’t understand what it was. He just enjoyed watching them go around and around on the tracks in his room.

When Derek was an infant, his father went out the day after he was born and bought a train set which he eagerly put together in Derek’s room. Many, quite rightly, felt that he had bought the train set for himself, so he could relive his childhood vicariously through his son. That probably was correct, but the end result was that Derek too loved trains.

I was 5 and my sister 4. The year was 1954 and my father had been posted to take command of the Third Battalion the Grenadiers. It was the second time he had taken charge of that battalion. The first was in 1947 just after partition in Bombay when he took over command from that last British colonel, Colonel Shebbear.

“Oh, I wish you could’ve been there when he ran.” Dan laughed at his recollection. “You could always tell where he was on the track. He had this long hair flowing behind him. Others with long hair would tie theirs behind in a ponytail or in a braid, but not him, he just let it flow and flow it did. Thick black shoulder length hair flowed behind him majestically as he ran around the track. I wish you had been there.”

“You know the best part of dying?”

“There is a best part?” asked John looking at his friend as he shook his head. “I didn’t know there was a best part.”

“You never have to clip your fingernails ever again!”

“And that’s the best part? You’re sick. I’d rather cut my toe and fingernails than die.”

“I know. I’m just kidding but how about no more haircuts?”

“You know, you’re right. That would be a good reason to look forward to my demise.” John laughed. “Have you ever thought of what you want on your epitaph?”

“And the heavens opened, and all the Gods fell to Earth.”

Much commotion.

“Wait a minute, where are you going?”

“Down to Earth. Didn’t I just hear you say that the heavens opened and the Gods fell to earth?”

“I did yes. But you’re not a God, at least not a God yet.”

Ramos looked down at the ground. “That’s just not fair. I’ve been waiting five hundred thousand years to become a God and I still can’t be one.”

“Well,” replied Jack, “looking sadly at the young boy who seemed so lost. “Well, it’s up to you. In order to be a God, you have to be a God of something. And you still haven’t decided what you’re going to do when you grow up.”

Richard was horrified. His wife of 35 years Amy was horrified. Even their trusted Black Labrador, Smoky, who normally was content laying by the front door looking at the birds digging for worms was horrified.

“Hi Mom and Dad, this is Evelyn.”

Over the course of the two weeks I stayed with him, I watched him begin to eat more and to begin to enjoy life more. He was like a child waiting to open a Christmas present when I bought some beer. He always had a drink in the evening around 6pm followed by dinner at 7.

“Is it 6?” He asked the first day I bought the beer.

“No, dad, it isn’t.”

He thought for a second, “what time is it?”

At the urging of my sister, I left my home in Pennsylvania at the end of January 2019 and travelled to my father’s home in a small village which lay in the foothills of the Himalayas. Burdened with the daily stresses of Western life, I had last visited him in May 2014, nearly 5 years ago.

“I see you’re left-handed.” Ralph looked at Craig a little confused. Craig continued, “you, you, put your car keys in your left pocket.” He hesitated for a second. “I notice these things especially because I’m left-handed as well,” and without saying another word, he reached into his left pocket and pulled out his keys, “see,” he proudly waved the keys in front of Ralph, who happened to be standing in a small crowd in the foyer of their office building busily discussing their relevant team scores from the weekend.

Arthur was never quite sure what his goals were in life. They seemed to be a moving target. When he was very young, the daily commuter train which rattled at high speed behind his home held his interest, until he heard the whistle sound one day and put an immediate end to that goal.

“Why is it called Wacky Wednesday mom?”

Esther had just finished reading her little daughter Emma, the Dr Suess book of the same name. She was about to tuck little Emma into bed, give her a kiss on her forehead, as she did every night and then join her husband in the living room, where he was busily updating himself with the news. That was something Esther didn’t like to see him do when he came home from work every evening, because it never failed to change his mood.

As he had done every morning since arriving at his parent’s home the previous Sunday, Jason awoke well before the sun had decided to rise in that part of the world and got dressed. He walked out of the back of the house and began to climb a hill, and didn’t stop until he had reached the summit, where he spread out a sheet he had brought with him, and sat down facing East.

Kumar wasn’t sure of what to expect. He had never been to a bris in his life, let alone heard of one. When he returned to his apartment after dinner, a very long dinner at that, with Steven at Mykonos that Tuesday evening, he threw all the stuff he carried in his pockets on to his desk, changed his clothes and then pulled out his phone to get onto the internet.

“It’s like everything else in life,” thought Tom as he lowered his car window and called over to a man standing by the roadside. “It’s like everything else,” he continued talking to himself, “what you dream of being in life and what actually happens are generally two different things.”

“And now for something completely different,” John read the sign over the doorway a few times before entering the store. He had never been to Markham before, but had heard that the town of 5,000 inhabitants boasted having the most fish and chip shops per capita of any town in the country. And that this one, the one with a very strange name, was simply the best. John had arrived in town, which was located on the South Western shore of England, not too far from Land’s End, the night before on a business trip.