Bigg

 Every morning David Bigg walked to the station. He took the same route every day. Leaving his small modest home full of items items hoarded by his wife, down the path through the worn black iron gate, set in the ruined brick wall. David crossed the busy main road, relying more than most on his sense of hearing, given his visual impairment. He walked northwards the full length of the road to the centre of town where he crossed the High Street. he passed It’s mediocre small town shops, budget supermarket, and the cafés and hairdressers named with puns. He passed on the corner the clothes shop named after Elvis Presley’s daughter, and the daughter of the owner. Religiously taking the pedestrian crossings, David walked onwards each morning for the mile walk to catch his morning train.. After the High Street, his walk, took him past much classier roads than his, where, the houses were much bigger than his own two bedroom bungalow that he shared with his wife, two daughters and uncountable cats.  Here the street had trees houses and the homes had cars parked in driveways . David Bigg‘s walk bore little relationship to his surroundings. Indeed David’s walk was an interior one. This was always true in all aspects of David’s life, not just on his morning commute. His mind followed an itinerary completely at variance with his life, and with his appearance. His was not a journey through town, but a journey of delusions of grandeur. His was not a walk in cheap shoes on hardened feet through rundown neighbourhoods. Instead, it was a voyage along trails of internal belief  involving the recognition of his brilliance and status. As he strolled, David considered his actions when he is finally rightly appointed prime minister. All of this took place in unspoken dialogue and anyone that did notice David would not have noticed his lips moving or curling into what he fondly imagined was a sardonic smile as he dealt with questions  in Parliament with devastating repartee . Passers-by, instead, would notice that he held himself oddly as he walked, that his eyes moved continuously behind his large, thick lens glasses and that he was not focused on his direction of travel. Taking the same route each morning, meant that David did not consciously need to navigate to the train station from his home. He arrived on autopilot for both his mind, and his eyes wandered.

In real life, David was not an important man. 10 years as an assistant accountant at a medium-sized brewery was very likely the pinnacle of his career.   This was no mean achievement on his part. David had been born into a poor family. He had a disability, having been born blind. His own father died when he was three years old. His widowed mother sent her disabled son away to a state institution. Here he was educated and raised. the result was a formal man with very limited ability for empathy. He had a need for recognition as an important man. It is both a cruelty, and a disappointment that this need could never be met, given the limit to both his intellectual and emotional intelligence.

Once past the larger houses, David made a final turn over the railway bridge and up to the station itself where he swiftly descended the stairs to his platform. It was a very practised routine and assuming the train arrived punctually, David arrived one minute before it pulled into the station. 

Every morning the station was packed with London commuters. For the first decade David shared this route with his wife, Ann. Recently, Ann had begun taking a much earlier train and was already at her desk in the city.