A long time ago I made a modest discovery about the way adjectives and nouns work together. When you read a word it has the effect of making a number of associated words easier to recognise – an effect called priming. If you’ve just read the word doctor you will be quicker to recognise the word nurse. That’s the sort of effect makes psychologists perk up. Encountering an adjective like hot primes warm but also cold - both synonyms and antonyms get that little extra priming boost. I discovered that this is only true for words in isolation. Adjectives used in sentences typically switch off the priming of antonyms. For example, reading shut door primes closed but will not prime open.
I’m telling you about this simply because I made this discovery at about the time I was appointed to a chair. A Professor at the tender age of 32. You see, I am qualified to write about the downside of precocity.
About the time I was involved in this research I received an invitation to present a paper to the psychology department of the University of Sussex. It was a pretty swanky place in those days. “Little Oxford by the Sea” they called it, and with reason. It was the sort of invitation you polish your shoes for.
Perhaps conscious of the distance between Dundee and Brighton, the invitation gave me the choice of flying or taking the Sleeper service First Class. Now, I’d never travelled by sleeper although I had, of course, seen all the necessary films. Ornate dining cars; waiters tapping the door to bring the brandy and soda; conversation at the bar as the landscape flies past. The temptation was irresistible.
Let me set the scene. It is 11.30 pm. on a particularly windy Taybridge Station, Dundee. Ignoring the chip-infected sheets of newsprint at his ankles the eager young professor makes his way to the first class carriages. Briefcase at the ready, striding through crowds of assorted drunks and a scattering of young women inexplicably under-dressed he reaches his carriage.
I don’t know whether you remember the first class sleeper compartment in those distant days. My own memories come flavoured with Dettol. A narrow bed with a single sheet inches away from a peculiar apparatus that functioned as dressing table and washing basin. Underneath, was a niche for storing the metal chamber pot. Everything is made of civic mahogany sticky with the patina of countless sleepers.
Above the bed was a long metal shelf, just wide enough for a paperback book. Not that reading was possible, the reading light – a small 20 watt bulb – having been strangled in its socket and left dangling on doubtful wires. Happily, it had been disconnected. I distributed my clothes on the various hooks and knobs, extinguished the light and got into bed in pitch darkness.
I fell asleep as the train slipped out high above the river Tay.
It was an impossibly brief journey. The train drew into my destination and I was left marvelling at the tranquillity of it all. Even if no friendly steward came bearing coffee and croissants, it had been wonderfully effortless. God - this was the way to travel! Never again the tiresome hassle of airports. No, I would arrive daisy fresh after a good night’s sleep, ready for anything. Even Sussex.
I pushed aside the blind peering out into the London dawn. To discover I was looking at Edinburgh’s Waverley Station at some ungodly hour.
We pulled out eventually, but sleep thereafter in that interminable night would not come. How could one night have so many hours? As they ground their way by I began to identify the particular rattle associated with each object in my dismal cell. One by one, bits of the shaving gear I had neatly set out, toppled over. I heard them rolling about on the floor. Other things fell, thudding softly into the darkness. Now and then rats, or possibly beavers, would gnaw at the woodwork, squeaking and chuckling to each other.
It must have been about Peterborough I woke abruptly from a kind of feverish sleep seized with terrible panic. Some hideous malady appeared to have struck me blind in the night. Complete velvet black wherever I looked. With the fleeting thought I did not have time to learn braille I sat bolt up in bed. There was a bright light, like something on a Christmas tree, as I struck the little shelf with my face.
When I came to, a little feeble light was filtering under the blind. We must have been in a tunnel. I felt my cheek at the point that seemed most painful. To discover it was ominously wet. I got out of the bed extending my arms in the dark like a cartoon clown, knocking things over, searching for the light switch. First class cabins of that vintage were well provided with mirrors and when the lights flickered on the sight facing me was startling. A huge bruise had almost closed my right eye. Blood had formed itself into a long congealed streak down to my chin. And yes, there was blood in the bed. In fact it was enough like a crime scene to discourage all thought of climbing back in.
It was when I started to sort myself out that I discovered that golden rule of existence: things can always be worse. My shaving gear had disappeared into the hole where the metal chamber pot went. And my trousers had managed to fall into the wash basin. They were not wet all over – in some respects they would have been better that way.
It was the custom in those happy days for the seasoned traveller just off his sleeper to breakfast at the Station Hotel. I could not risk it. It was a toss-up whether they’d find a table for an incontinent prize fighter, so I waddled my way to Victoria station.
I dried out on the train, emitting a faint scent of disinfectant in the process. It hadn’t been possible to shave, of course, but enough of that - we were here at last. Stubbly and one-eyed, perhaps a little dubious about the crotch, but no longer bleeding. I was ready to give my talk.
To be continued ….