Phil: Have you ever looked at the blurb on the back of a book, and thought it might be about you?
Two posh girls, Gresham and Eupheme, are sitting on a train at Milton Keynes station when they see a trainspotter: a pathetic, badly-dressed saddo with a terrible haircut and a worse anorak. The two are half-sisters and have always fought: now their argument rages over the trainspotter. Is he doomed to eternal nerdiness or could he be taught to appreciate the finer things in life? Eupheme bets he can: in time for Gresham’s engagement party she will have transformed him into a man that her sister would fancy…
Ian Ringfold is the trainspotter, and the story is in essence, a modern(ish) version of Pygmalion (My Fair Lady if you must). Eupheme plays the Henry Higgins character throwing money at Ian to turn him from a saddo (in the sister’s opinion) to a dude. By the middle of the book, she has pretty much succeded, and then he starts to turn the tables on both women.
There are some good jokes in here, starting with the title – Platform 5 is the brand of train spotting books full of numbers waiting to be crossed out. Also, some howlers for the nerds to spot. You don’t take the locomotive off a High-Speed Train and replace it with one from the sidings (you can’t split the set of coaches and loco easily) and when Ian talks about visiting London’s Horticultural Halls to visit an exhibition of model railways, aeroplanes etc. the show, called IMREX, was toy trains only. Trust me on this. I was there.
It’s set in the mid-1990s, when the Internet (then with a capital I) (OK, World Wide Web) was in its infancy. Eupheme might work as a big-shot charity fundraiser, but she doesn’t use the web, or e-mail, and doesn’t really see the point. For the nerds, there are plenty of brand name drops too. I didn’t check the types of techy kit mentioned, but assumed the author had got it right, but did find myself a little nostalgic about a mention of Evesham Micros, who I remember well advertising on the page of Micro Mart magazine. For the fashionistas, there are plenty of clothing brands given a namecheck. I didn’t check these either. Candice can tell me if these are right when she reads it.
There’s bucketloads of celebrity name-dropping. Llewellyn’s Red Dwarf co-star Craig Charles plays a small part late in the story and there’s also a very short appearance from Chris Barrie from the same show. I did wonder if you have to ask a real person before they appear in your book? Kirsty Wark quizzes Ian during a girlie lunch at one point, and I suspect that she does really know what trainspotting is.
Underlying the story, is the thought that Ian might be being changed, but does he really want or need to change? Why do posh, rich and pretty girls, both of whom live chaotic and somewhat disastrous personal lives, get to decree what is, and what isn’t, acceptable?
nolanparker 