Train Lord: The Astonishing True Story of One Man's Journey to Getting His Life Back On Track - Softcover

Mol, Oliver

Softcover

ISBN 10: 024152508X ISBN 13: 9780241525081

Verlag: Michael Joseph, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

The astonishing true story of trust, pain, becoming lost, and finding a way back to yourself despite it all

'An intimate preservation of a moment in time, full of personality' THE TIMES
__________

Life is beautiful - even in the dark . . .

Oliver Mol was happily drifting through his twenties when the migraine exploded in his head.

Suddenly, he could barely function. He felt marooned. Nothing helped. Yet he was desperate to save himself.

Then he found the trains. The job of train guard has intense moments of strict, regimented activity in between periods of calm serenity. It was just what Oliver needed. Not only could he do this, but also it might be a way out.

Train Lord is the story of Oliver's extraordinary recovery. A journey back into the light . . .
__________

'Tender, vital and quietly hopeful: a tale of remaking' Guardian

'Rude, raw, visceral, painful and wildly funny' Saga

'Intense and humble, Train Lord won my heart' Australian Book Review

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Oliver Mol is the author of the critically acclaimed Lion Attack!. He was the inaugural winner of the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers as well as the recipient of an Australian Council Grant. In 2020, the stage show of Train Lord proved a runaway success during the Sydney Fringe Season. Oliver grew up dividing his time between Texas and Brisbane and now lives in Sydney.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Train Lord
The first day of train school our teacher asked us what
we would do if we were on the train and we had to go to
the toilet, and we’d already had our break. For a while,
no one spoke. Then Susie said, Shit in a bag, sir. Yeah.
Probably shit in a bag. Good on ya, Suze, our teacher
said. The shit in a bag approach. A classic. Then we went
around the room and said our names and where we’d
come from and a fun fact about us too. Ed said he’d
worked in logistics and sailed around the world with the
Navy in his youth, and Zayd had been a transit cop with
a baby on the way. But now it was my turn and I didn’t
know what to say. I didn’t want to talk about the migraine
or how I’d failed as a writer. I didn’t want to talk about
pain. So I said my name was Oliver and flipped my wrist
frypan-style. I winked and said that I loved to cook.
***
Five months of train school? What the hell did you learn?
Sam asked. We learned about the railway, the different
trains, the S sets and K sets and C sets and T sets and M
sets and H sets and A sets and B sets. We learned how to
communicate with bell signals and where to locate the fire
extinguishers and how to administer first aid. We learned
the Sydney Trains Network, every station in order, and
what platforms, if any, a train could terminate on. We
learned how to take a train apart and put it back together,
and how to drive the train in case the driver became inca-
pacitated. We learned how to prepare and how to
terminate a train, how to test for faults, and how to talk,
phonetically, on the radio, as if we were in the army, like
my dad taught me long ago. We learned how to evacuate
trains, safely, methodically, and we learned to follow rules.
We learned the correct procedures for opening windows
and climbing ladders and wearing backpacks and the cor-
rect paths to walk from the station to the train yard. We
learned which signals were permissive and which were
absolute and which would remain red, fixed, no matter
what. We learned to slow down, to not think, or to think
only about what we had learned; we learned how to stop.
And I remembered how to breathe.
We were shown how to wake drunken people passed out
on the train and we were given the number for security
and told about the guards who had been assaulted late at
night. We were told to watch out for spitters and we were
told of the frequent suicides and we were told to watch
out for fights. We were told about the snakes, especially at
Leppington, and we were told that none of this was a joke.
We were told about the drugs tests and the alcohol tests,

and we watched videos, filmed in the s, about the trains
that had derailed and the people who had died because
someone, somewhere, had failed to follow the rules.
We learned to make announcements, to stay calm;
we learned to be rocks. We learned that in life and work
the waves would come and the waves would crash and
people would yell and call us names, but we wouldn’t care
because we were stable and dependable and when the
waves were gone we were still there because we were
rock people now. We learned all this and five months
later we passed exams and were given shirts and pants
and hats and whistles and belts and vests and flags and
backpacks and shoes and belts and keys. We worked a -
hour roster, seven days a week, days a year. We were
given train diagrams that told us where to stop and when
to have lunch and when and where our shifts would end.
And there was something beautiful about changing,
about not writing, or not thinking, or thinking very little,
about wearing a uniform and being told what to do.
Congratulations, our teacher said on the last day of
school. You’ve all won the lottery. I’ve been with the
railway for forty-seven years, and I’ve never worked a
day in my life.

On my first shift, there was a suicide. I went to Hornsby to
relieve the guard; his train had cut someone in half. Fucking
useless pricks always offing themselves around Christmas,
he said. Want my advice? Don’t look at the body. So I sat

on the train while emergency services cleaned up the blood

and the limbs and the mess, and when the body wheeled
past I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. I had to see the
body wrapped in a white sheet on a stretcher, and I had to
see the way their legs poked one way and their arms poked
another. I had to see the sun and I had to see the sky, the
blood drying beneath it, and I had to imagine his parents
or friends or siblings when they got the call. I had to know
what that moment looked like, that this wasn’t just an idea,
that this was final, that this was real. After I took the train
to the sheds, I burst into tears.

When I was a writer, or unemployed, living at Toby’s
house, in his bed, he sat me down and said: Oliver. You
need to get your shit together. Get a job. This is no way to
live your life. And so we spent the following hours drink-
ing Toby’s rum and snorting Toby’s cocaine, looking at all
the ways it might be possible for me to grow up. We
looked at advertising jobs and public relations jobs and
copywriting jobs. The following day I updated my LinkedIn.
I wrote cover letters, emails. Once, absurdly, I even arrived
unannounced at the door of a creative agency, my résumé
in a manila folder. I was twenty-five, then, and on the rare
occasion I received an interview, I would make the mis-
take of telling the truth. I would say that I did not have a
business degree or a communications degree but that I
did have one of the most useless degrees of all: a creative
writing degree. I would say that I did not have any formal

copywriting or advertising or marketing...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Michael Joseph
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 024152508X
• ISBN 13: 9780241525081
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Penguin Random House Ireland Limited; productsafety@penguin.co.uk; ; Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street; Dublin; Irland