Dismissing these maudlin reflections, I hear my station called – mumbled, rather – over a crackly address system by a Punjabi ticket-inspector unversed in English cadences. The clipped consonants of crisply uniformed conductors have been abolished, mashed into a multicultural blur by a soon-to-be privatised rail network that has begun to call its passengers ‘customers’ and treats them like cattle. Mine is not the only occupation in modern Britain that has lost its point and purpose. The whole lackadaisical country is slouching into sloppiness. Bloody Germans could teach us a thing or two.

Chewing a Cham. Rad. homoeopathic sedative, I grab my suitcase and stumble off the train, into the sour blare of a brass band playing, as if by macabre request, V. Kuznetsov’s Dawn on the Dnieper. At the centre of the platform stands the Lord Mayor in full esoteric regalia, all gowned and chained. I know the fellow. His name is Charlie Froggatt and we once hacked our way through the Mozart clarinet quintet with two schoolmasters and a visiting undertaker in the empty Temperance Room of Bethesda Methodist Chapel – a hip-flasked impromptu performance on a blank August bank holiday. Froggatt, a grocer by trade, is a whiz on the woodwinds.

‘It’s sodding Simmonds, innit?’ he bellows in my direction. ‘Welcome to Tawburn!’ though that is not the name of the place. Time for some pseudonyms. Can’t use X and Y – too Conan Doylish. Let’s call the area ‘Tawside’ and its towns ‘Tawburn’ and ‘Oldbridge’. Anything more readily identifiable could provoke a reopening of police files, and that’s the last thing I need. Tawburn Station is where I stand, amid the usual debris of empty crisp packets and polystyrene cups.

‘Your Worship,’ I address Froggatt with mock pomp, ‘how good of you to come out and greet me – and in full fig, what’s more.’

‘Cut it out,’ growls Froggatt. ‘This isn’t for you. It’s bleddy Tawside Music Day and we’re trying to raise a bit of consciousness in public places. Band’s been practising that modern sunrise stuff for weeks and still comes unstuck on high E. Come to think of it, you’re just what I need. Jump in car and I’ll give you lift to the town hall.’

There is no polite way out of this. Froggatt grabs my elbow and steers me ceremonially down the platform to his black Daimler, the band switching to the safer chords of ‘Hail the Conqu’ring Hero’ from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus. My luggage is picked up by a porter, whom I point to the Royal Tawburn Hotel across the square. Rather than use one of the health-club inns that have sprung up around the marina, I stick with the lugubrious old station hotel, where no amount of air-freshener can ever dispel the day-long stench of breakfast kipper.