Getting people off in trains and aircraft has become rather an art with me.
Indeed. I make the modest boast that none of my people has missed a train or aircraft yet, although I have reduced those concerned to a mass of nerves, to say nothing of an uproar of shouted hysteria.
In my spectacular farewells railway guards become shivering wrecks, locomotive drivers keep jumping down to check the brake shoes, air pilots keep counting their engines and my relatives, on their bended knees, beg me to stay at home.
But inevitably I go, driving all the shouting, weeping, nervous throng before me, hours ahead of time.
I work out a rigid schedule of getting there; I cannot tolerate the late arrival, the person who makes the train as it begins to move; the one who comes running from the air terminal, censured by the hot eyes of air hostesses and pilots already on their check lists.
I am a hurly-burly early bird, a panic merchant with panache, a clock-watcher of rolling eye and sweat-beaded forehead, and I can reduce any group of comparatively sane travellers to gibbering wrecks, locking themselves In their train compartments or galloping into the aircraft before the seats have scarcely cooled.
I saw off my grandchildren with parental escort at Central Station, Sydney, recently and I must say it was one of the loveliest panics I have witnessed.
Already I had checked the brake shoes of the Southern Aurora, tested the temperature of the drinking water and inspected the ashtrays when my irresponsible family announced it was retiring to the refreshment room.
“What!” I cried, “with the train only an hour from departure?”
What if the service was slow, what, if by some sudden quirk a NSW train started before time.
My young nearest-of-kin invited me to take a banana skin and walk the handrail of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, a loving thought, I’ll admit, but anyway there was plenty of time to catch the bridge!
I was on pins and needles in the railway refreshment room and skidded my tray around the bend to the cashier with the flair of a grand prix driver.
I must say that the cashier regained her poise from the sudden shower of pineapple juice with commendable speed, returning my chocolate eclair from the till, along with the change, without comment.
I explained that we were racing for a train. There was no time to lose, I said. Already the diesel was standing at Platform One and the signal lights were reddening and greening, the carriage attendants pacing beside their tea urns and heavens only knows where it would all end.
Calm yourself, said the woman, as I dashed to the nearby table, my knife and fork chattering while I sipped tea from the tray because there wasn’t any left in the cup.
The grandchildren were already heavily involved in thick milkshakes which they sucked with agonising slowness, their bright, wicked eyes traversing my quivering jowls.
“We won’t miss the train,” their mother said. “Drink your drinks, children. This is but your grandfather with his pre-departure nerves, Old Panic Stations himself”
She proceeded to drink her coffee in measured, spaced sips. eyeing me in that cool, nerve-racking way that daughters-in- law have when handling the Over Sixties.
Finally I got them all under way, ushering, pushing, clock-pointing, chair stumbling and generally making an exit comparable with the last moments of the Titanic.
Outside, to my horror, I found the entire family hooked on a magazine stall, turning leisurely pages, or with noses into comics, and I can tell you I almost swooned on the spot. The platform was a kilometre long if it was a millimetre and here they were fiddling while the diesel burned.
I flung myself at the magazine stall owner and bought every-thing in sight.
“Well, that worked, didn’t it?” the family told each other, clutching their prizes and at last allowing themselves to be ushered trainwards by old sweaty hands himself.
How I got them to their carriage and finally their compartment, I’ll never know.
There was one last terrible moment when I got stuck in the narrow corridor when another stout person attempted to pass me. I had a terrible picture of us being locked all the way to Albury and both of us past our prime, but with a last heave and lunge we broke loose and I fell out on to the platform, alone at last.
I staggered wearily to wave at the young making faces at me from the window and their parents serenely pointing with marked amusement at the clock face.
A whistle shrilled, green lights glowed, the Southern Aurora passed into the Sydney eventide among the sparkling high-rise neoning the bold night. Wearily I fell moaning on to a passing luggage wagon and it was kind of them to wheel me back to the railway refreshment room.
So, if you want a spectacular and passionate speeding of your departure, if you want a really scarifying send-off, call this prince of punctuality and I’ll put the matter in train.
Max Fatchen