Ninety minutes stopped outside Reading. The book gets two sentences at the end, sorry.

The 18:48 didn't move for an hour and ten minutes. Points failure somewhere ahead, then a driver who had run out of hours, then a long apologetic silence from the intercom that was somehow worse than the announcements had been.

Things I observed. A man in the seat opposite ate a boiled egg out of a sandwich bag and then, unbelievably, a second one. A woman two rows up did an entire video call to her mother about a boiler. Someone's Yorkshire terrier walked the length of the carriage twice and was fussed over by everybody including the egg man. The overhead lights flickered once and about eight people looked up at exactly the same moment, like meerkats.

Around the hour mark a sort of solidarity set in. People started sharing chargers. The woman across the aisle offered me a Fruit Pastille and I took the purple one, because I have no self-control.

I got through most of it in that stalled hour and I'd have been happy to stay there. Patti Smith writes about being cold and broke and completely certain, and she doesn't sentimentalise a minute of it. I missed my connection and didn't mind.