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"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."

Peter De Vries

For a diversion from the QS project I've been on for the last week, K tells me the Flying Scotsman is passing through!  Any excuse and I'm off.  I call J and leave the car at his place, only a short walk to a nearby bridge and ... we wait.  The parapet is soon lined with similar souls eager to escape from tedium, and J and S who are flying out to Greece tonight!  A quick break from the packing and preparations they tell me, then off to the airport late tonight.  But they couldn't miss the Scotsman travelling through.  A twenty minute wait and it appears, pounding down the track towards us,  and after I rattle off a few shots it's gone again, excitement over it's back to t'mill.  There was an element of nostalgia as I remembered childhood days in Pontnewydd, before the line closed.  We'd be lined up against the parapet as the trains approached, and as it went under the bridge we were engulfed in steam and smuts - running to the other parapet to "beat the train" before it emerged the other side; I don't recall checking for traffic before running across the road...

There was also the time in school when my moment of fame was the line "I've got a smut in my eye", delivered in a group poetry reading I think.  Same thing happened today, my dominant recollection of the train passing was a smut in my eye!