It was little different 30 something years on. Electricity replaced coal and steam traction, and the trip from the City was interrupted by fewer intermediate destinations; Paisley, Inverkip, IBM. IBM. Once it was Singer on the other line. Silk and cotton usurped by silicon threads of unimaginable thinness. Sewing machines conceding to personal computers, the gateways to cyberspace.

Navigate through unseen byways
riding on electrons at the speed of light
and out into the ether to unreachable destinations
where beginnings end and ends begin.
Shapeless.
The Universe in a box.
No batteries, maps nor directions included.

Alas, my dear Captain Kirk,
from a future
years back in our time.
You got it all wrong.
Cyberspace
is indeed
THE final frontier.

And to Weymss Bay, the terminus at the edge of the sea, the real intermediate destination. The railway station and pier were much cheerier and cleaner now, but otherwise unchanged for those who were there before. Walking once more down the long wide wooden planks of timber floor, the sound of footsteps of past hopefuls could be heard; hoards of dull, gray humanity spewing and spilling out from the wooden and steel caterpillars and on down the wooden pier floor. Wall to wall. Marching in urgent unison down to the ferry.
Waiting.

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

A thousand pairs of feet. So loud.
Men with hats, gray and brown belted trench coats knuckles white gripping large tattered overfilled leather suitcases.

Tramp, tramp, Tramp.

Women in headscarves, berets or wearing hats resembling tea cozies or upturned flower pots and dressed in cheap printed frocks or shapeless skirts. Some clutching infants, pushing cots on wheels or with small ones at the end of a free hand all with an urgency.

Tramp, tramp, tramp .

To get on 'the boat'. Fearful that it would complete the final stage of the journey without them. But never did.
And there were the stragglers, loitering. A handful of less urgent but equally purposeful with regard to the destination. Better dressed, more relaxed, smoking cigarettes and quiet in conversation. They had a philosopher or three among them: "Last on, first off. Nae bother " THEY had been here before.

But now there were no marching masses. Only a handful of passengers waiting patiently for the ferry and the crossing. And some recalling the sounds of ghosts long past.
For those infants of five decades past now there was two weeks in exotic locations; The Cost Brava, The Costa Del Sol, or on islands dropped into deep azure seas where English is spoken, badly, by summer darkened olive skinned locals. They sell them British beer in British styled pubs. They feed them familiar fast foods and fish 'n' chips, after a fashion. But there is always the hot glaring sun and crowded E coli invested beaches to remind them that they really had left home.

The Crossing. By R.D.McLaren 16 November 1999