Day Three: Worldbuilding?

Yeah, no, I'm struggling with the plot on this one, can you tell? Today I decided that I would try to go back a bit and see if that helped bring some action or co nflict or indeed, anything of interest to make people want to read it. It turns out that this is harder to do than I thought and I got the first tendrils of worry that maybe writing the characters my 12 year old self wrote back when I was 12 might not be the best idea now I'm in my 40s... Oh well, so far the main character remains 13, I think, and so far that hasn't caused me too much angst apart from revealing how old I now feel.

I'm also struggling with when the main character, who remains unnamed, is from. It's obvious that they aren't from the 1990s, I think they were at first but I spotted that a lot of their verbal tics are much more modern, but from around now-ish. The setting is still very much early 1990s but I stole it from another place and now that may provide more of the initial conflict. It's the Republic that I kept banging on about eearlier here, actually. We'll see if I can actually make it work this time...

Here it is:

       Carlisle railway station is mercifully familiar in layout, I have been here before, even if the specifics remind me that something is very different and that this is not where I think I am. The old pedestrian bridge, all white and brown paint over metal, is still there but there aren’t any advertisements or barriers – the station and platforms are open. And busy. People walk to and fro all over, the hubbub and noise almost jarring after the relatively quiet roads and streets on the way. I am once again struck by the fact that everyone, everyone, is wearing a hat: men, women, children, all hats. Despite the warmth of the day, the sun streaming through the glass above, there are so many people in long coats done all the way up. Briefcases, suitcases, trunks like mine, satchels, all on display. It is heaving. People wait in lines by the edges of platforms and there is a smell of steam in the air – maybe I was right when I thought it was Victorian times, because I keep expecting to see steam trains. I don’t. Waiting at the main line platform there is a train that looks, well, familiar. It is blue and silver painted and has a red stripe down the middle running horizontally. I watch as the doors open almost soundlessly – or at least I cannot make out their noise above the human chatter – and people leave in numbers before being replaced by the crowds waiting.

       Leeds. The girl’s father told me I was going to Leeds and he told me, and I remember, that the platform for that journey is left from the main entrance hall. I remember there being glass automatic doors between the entrance and ticket halls to the main station but here it’s just an open arch. I walk and turn left and it looks almost exactly as I expect. There’s even a train with a yellow painted front waiting there – which is just what I remember from the last time I took a train. It looks like a diesel, I suppose, I’m not enough of a train spotter to really make much of an identification, but I notice that the electric cables over the mainline are here too and that the waiting train is connected to them by extending roof-rack things. It means the train is electric, obviously, which in turn means, if this is direct, then the whole route must be. I’ve been on the Settle to Carlisle railway before, was it electric? I can’t remember and decide that not knowing and being open to it is probably better than knowing and feeling that unsettling wobbly feeling that each new revelation and things provides.

       Motion sickness, like I’m on the back seat of a car and can’t see where we’re going or I dared to read on a trip through the winding roads of the Lake District and I feel sick but not enough to find relief in retching and vomit. Hanging permanently on the edge of it without the climax.

 

       First things first: getting dressed. There is no way I’m risking breakfast in a nightgown! Luckily, for whatever reason, there isn’t much in the way of choice of clothing. Unluckily it is all clothing for a girl, which makes sense, and that makes me a little wary. I am no fashionista and, well, I haven’t had a lifetime of preparation of being a girl. Being aware of what girls were wearing in my class or in my street or even my Mum… it’s all well and good, sure, but even that isn’t very helpful when the options are both limited and, for want of a better word, strange.

       There are no trousers and the knickers are less stretchy than I remember my own underwear being. No label in the back with washing instructions, no evidence of anything but elastic in the waistband and leg holes. I sigh, I suppose there’s no need for any expansion in that area, but it is a surprise. Also, and this is embarrassing, they feel almost nice as I pull them up. Similarly for the bra. I’ve seen my Mum getting dressed once or twice passing her bedroom to go downstairs, I know it fastens in the back and I know it’s supposed to feel supportive and nice. This one was white, like the knickers, and relatively plain, like the knickers. It also felt soft in the same way and had no labels – have they cut the labels from all of their clothes? – and there was only one in the drawer when I looked anyway. It doesn’t take a great deal of dexterity to fasten it and then just shuffle it around to make everything feel comfortable. Which is a very strange sensation, by the way, and not one on which I want to linger too long.

       I have a choice of white or light pink for a vest, I checked the thickness of the blouse and there’s no way it will be thick enough to hide the bra and whilst I’m not used to having that consideration there’s also no way I’m going to make the mistake of showing more than I need to. The blouse is thin, making the decision for white for me. I’d have chosen white anyway. Again that lack of stretchiness, just doesn’t seem right, and then I put on the blouse. Exactly like a school shirt except the buttons are on backward and they feel smaller – this genuinely takes me the longest of any of the clothing items so far and causes me to hiss a few times as I try to get the buttons properly fastened so they don’t just pop right back out of the buttonholes. I end up having to button the cuffs too, twice for each one, further cementing my idea that I have jumped into a psychopath’s body: who unbuttons their cuffs?

       Like I say, there are no trousers, leaving me a choice of navy blue pinafore dress, about knee length, and a longer skirt that seems a bit airy and leaves more room to move. It’s a contest, but not in the way anyone would guess, and I plumb for the longer skirt simply because I don’t want to look like a schoolgirl. If it’s a school day and I chose wrong, I reason, then I’ll find out pretty quickly and still have time to change accordingly. Once again, the skirt has no label and the waistband isn’t stretchy, in fact it takes tying it together at the left and a zip to make it hang properly. Seems too high, higher than I’d wear trousers, but that’s where it fits and so that’s where it sits.