BENEFITS OF LETTING OFF SOME STEAM...

When I was a kid I was a bit of a trainspotter.Me and my pals would sit on the grassy slopes of Ranmore Hill and watch the old puffer trains coming down the track. We were always chuffed to see them, and would have been chuffed to death if standing on the line. In fact that nearly happened to us many times because our favourite hobby was placing pennies on the line when a train approached to see how flattened they got.

I’m not sure why but I have an enduring fascination with trains. Even went to a railway fancy dress party once where everyone was wearing platforms.Those who know me well - my wife and the lady on checkout 3 at Tesco - will vouch for the fact that many of my favourite films have a train theme: The First Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery, the first James Bond, and The Ghost Train with Sir Arthur Askey, the Bond who never was. There’s also The Lady Vanishes, the Hitchcock classic with a fake nun in give-away high heels, strangely arousing that, lads, and Charlie Bronson’s Breakheart Pass, with the guilty pleasure that is Under Siege 2, with Steven Seagal before he started painting his hair on, Picasso style. Staying on track however I can trace my railway obsessions back to when I was just a young buck, trying to figure out what in the world girls were good for. Sometimes that question still comes back to haunt me. Back then, Stan Lee was the God of my universe and Rod Serling just slightly below him in the pecking order because he smoked too much.