The People on Platform 5

Author: Clare Pooley
Publisher: Bantam Press
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenbeerger
If you’ve ever been a commuter on British Rail you’ll note that people don’t talk to each other and make every effort to avoid eye contact or anything that could be construed as communication. Everyone stays locked in their bubble as the train speeds through to its final destination spilling its travellers out of the doors for another day at the office.  One may glance around surreptitiously and make up stories and names about the regulars but never, ever speak to them except perhaps in a

dire emergency. And this is where this deliciously funny, heart-warming, feel-good story begins. There we are on the ten stop morning commute from Hampton Court to Waterloo. Eccentric Iona is sitting in her usual seat with pet bulldog Lulu perched beside her. Staggering in on her stilettos, she always arrives early to make sure no one takes the seventh aisle seat on the right facing forward in carriage number three but there is a tacit agreement between travellers that the wildly over- dressed middle-aged woman ‘owned’ that corner. From her capacious bag she takes a flask and dainty cup and saucer and pours her morning green tea – a ritual that is not unnoticed by the regulars. She surveys the carriage, takes note of the regulars – ha, even Smart-but Sexist -Surbiton is here this morning sitting next to a pretty red head (Emmie). But it is when SSS (aka Piers) chokes on a grape that things start to happen. Sanjay – (Too-Good-to-be-True New Malden) a nurse - saves the day with the Heimlich Manoeuvre and gets his chance to speak to Emmie whom he has admired from afar for so many months, with very unsatisfactory results. But the ice has been broken and the event has started a chain reaction. When teenager Martha is virally shamed by her fellow schoolmates and her stress causes her to vomit over Piers computer, Iona takes up the baton on her behalf (after all she is a magazine agony aunt) and the story starts to gather momentum. And the unexpected happens as we learn the real stories of each of these relatable five.
Clare Pooley has concocted a vivid story that has at its core the outspoken but marvellously extravagant Iona whose age is now a liability at her magazine and whose home life centres around her beloved Bea. As each of the characters give up their secrets to the empathetic Iona their lives will irrevocably change but when the chips are down and Iona is in trouble will they rescue her?
What I simply delighted in was how Pooley has captured the essence of assumption and how, when we open ourselves up to sharing (within reason of course, after all these are Brits) how different the reality is. When we are kinder and more open to communication we learn so much about our fellow humans. She is an astute observer who has taken her experiences as an advertising executive and  commuter on London Transport (even down to the vomit event) and used it to create a deliciously good read that will resonate will all of us. ​