The lonely old man on the train who talked to me about Brexit

April 2016. It could have been May. I can’t remember.

I was on the way back from Letchworth. I’d just been up to join Richard B Brookes filming his last video for FiveWhoFans. It was the second time I met Richard in person, first time I met Billy. I had been a bit nervous about it. I’m not the best in front of the camera. The camera always makes me feel a bit self-conscious. Its why I always use an avatar whenever I’m making videos these days and only rarely make on-camera appearances whenever I’m feeling brave enough to do it. But I had a lovely day with everybody, proved to myself that I could break out of my insecure shut-in lifestyle occasionally, and that was enough for me.

It was getting quite late. My headphones had broken, so I couldn’t put music on and just drown out the world as I journeyed from A to B like I usually do whenever I have to go anywhere. Still, I was in a fairly good mood, so I decided to just let things be and listened to the sound of the cars around me as I walked to the station.

It was dark. The station board where the trains were usually listed was broken. I also didn’t have a signal on my phone so I couldn’t check the website. I asked someone at the ticket office for advice and she said “okay, get on the next train on platform 5, get off at the next station, wait five minutes, then get on the next one.” It was as if I’d discovered the solution to a puzzle in a video game.

Anyway, I ended up on the correct train. It was fairly quiet. I sat at a table opposite an old man with wispy grey hair and a walking stick resting on his side. He was smiling. A warm and friendly smile. I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel apprehensive in the same way I normally do around strangers.

That was when he started talking to me. This usually doesn’t happen. As said, I spend most train journeys with my headphones on, playing a stupid block puzzle game on my phone, trying to tune out my surroundings. Being outside London was probably another factor that encouraged this man to start a conversation. No one talks to each other on trains in London. Everyone’s too tired or focused on wherever they’re going. But this time I coincidentally didn’t have my headphones in, and a fellow passenger wanted to talk, so I just let the conversation happen.

The man asked me if I’d had a nice evening. I said I had. I’d been filming a YouTube video with some friends. He then asked me to explain what YouTube was, and I did.

He asked me if I’d been friends with them long. I said no. We’d made friends over the internet. We made similar videos, Richard got in touch, and invited me to make something together. The man nodded and said it sounded like a nice day.

The man then said that he didn’t have any friends. I said I was sorry to hear that. He told me that he was almost 80 now and most of his friends had been dying off year after year and he was incredibly lonely.

He said I should cherish the friends I made because you never know when you’re going to lose them.

That was when he mentioned Brexit, but not in the way I was expecting.

He said “that’s why I’m voting remain in the referendum in June. I just think its better to be together. Its terrible being all on your own.”

I had been expecting him to mention Brexit at some point because everyone was talking about it at the time, and if he did mention Brexit then I was expecting to hear from the opposite perspective to that one. I was ready to start shuffling and sitting on my hands awkwardly. Most older people I knew were going to vote for it. I remember my Mum, who at the time worked at a charity shop, had an old man come in and hand her some books, and he said to her “you can have these if you promise to vote leave!” My mum told him that her son was heavily invested in remain winning and I’d been talking about it nonstop for months. Mum and Dad had been teasing me about it when they’d seen me get so irate about it. I will admit that I was incredibly tedious to be around at the time. My work was set to get much more difficult if Brexit won (and it has) and I was in a constant state of fight or flight.

Anyway, the train got to my stop at about that point and I had to get up and leave. I smiled and said “nice talking to you,” and he smiled and nodded and said “you too,” and I left.

I was considering writing about this at the time, but everyone reading this remembers what that spring was like. I would have been accused of lying or trying to emotionally manipulate people.

I think this story might illustrate a point about how most people around my age have spent the last seven years bitterly describing our elders as the generation that’s screwed us all over, when that’s not always the case. I’ll admit I have succumbed to that viewpoint in some cases, and I did here with that moment of anticipation; where my fingers curled around the seat underneath me, anticipating being forced into yet another reiteration of the same bloody argument again.

But he didn’t say any of the things I expected. He just shared his emotions. It was a nice chat I had with an elderly man I met. He asked me about my day. I talked. He talked about his life and I listened.

It was probably one of the only positive intergenerational conversations between strangers in the last decade.