On being fully platformed, and other experiences
I found a new verb, this weekend. To platform, or to be platformed. Picked it up on the 11:06 from Paddington to Castle Cary. We drew up, unwontedly, just outside Reading, and if there was any possibility of hearing, locally, a single blackbird singing, or even, farther and farther, all the birds of Berkshire, it was obliterated by the guard’s announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, it looks as if we’re going to be held outside the station waiting for a platform. Please do not attempt to leave the train until we are fully platformed and stationary within the station.” To platform. To shape like a plat. Which is, I discover, a map or a plan, or a variant of plait, as in braid. Or, better, the French word, one half of plat-du-jour. I think, therefore, that to platform is to imagine the dish you’d most like to eat at your next meal, and to platform fully is to realise in your imagination not just the dish, but the place in which you’d most like to eat it. So as the train leaves Reading and...