Track record

I've always loved trains, above all other forms of transportation. One of my earliest memories is of being taken on a steam train journey in Devon and I still remember the excitement and mystery of it. Once I attempted to create some new memories for my little sisters, then aged 6 and 8, by taking them to Glasgow with me on the train; although it's a much more prosaic journey, something about racing along the tracks, looking out of the windows as the landscape flies past, even buying a coffee from the trolley, serves in some small way to deliver a fraction of the experience of Robert Powell in The 39 Steps, all the Agatha Christie novels I tore through, Adlestrop by Edward Thomas, and the beginning of Stardust Memories.


Sydney's trains are double-deckers, with excellent, practical green leather seats kitted out with a middle section that converts from one side to another so you can change the direction you're facing in (an important consideration for me because my travel-sickness is exacerbated by facing backwards) and shiny fittings glinting in the light. The windows are scratched to hell and the interiors are dim; it's not the Trans-Siberian Express, but I'm completely satisfied.

A clean sweep

I was intrigued by the story of a Japanese girl who committed suicide using household cleaner - a phenomenon known, apparently, as "detergent suicide". I hate to be cavalier about something as serious as this, but although suicide has never even crossed my mind as an option, I am quite fascinated by it: for instance, did you know that the number one method of committing suicide in Hong Kong is by, er, throwing yourself from a tall building? The second one is by burning charcoal - a modish method which is very Asian in style and which led to calls for bans on the sale of barbecue charcoal in garages, and which Hong Kongers seem to have copied (like Bathing Ape, and Hello Kitty, and other infantile trends) from Japan, after a spate of similar suicides there.

This raises one of the central issues about new reporting of such events - it often seems to serve pour encourager les autres, and no doubt even now desperate teenagers of every nationality are frantically searching the Internet to find out how this 14 year old managed to pull it off in such spectacular style using ingredients found in the bathroom cupboard. So: report the details, perpetuate the problem.

I was led in the end to a most peculiar Wikipedia page on suicide methods - which seemed to be to be nothing more than a "how-to" guide for those looking for an easy way out. The strange nature of this entire entry, which lists different methods in alphabetical order starting with "Beheading", is illustrated by the following entry under the distinctly American-sounding "vehicular impact":

"Jumping in front of a fast-moving vehicle, especially a large one, such as a truck or train, can prove fatal. A classic example of suicide involves one tying oneself to railroad tracks in order to be run over by an oncoming train. The self control required to stay on the tracks as the train approaches can be quite immense, and the result quite traumatizing to the driver of the vehicle."

Thanks for that! I had no idea!