A person purchased The Lost Chair and stipulated that it must be delivered in person. The timeframe was infinite. I was heading their way so I took it with me. By train.
I packed it up with scraps of bubble wrap and yards of tape. I am a creator not a corporation. Messy and human not ordered and mechanical. I wanted to protect it. Even though I brought it into being, the person who bought it gave it a new kind of meaning. We collaborated. That was worth bubble wrapping and taping.
I felt highly self-conscious as I carried it through Preston train station. Worrying that such an odd sight would attract ridicule. That surely someone would stop me and then I’d be stuck and have failed in both travelling and delivering. Notice the additional layer of cardboard protection. Chair protected by bubble wrap protected by cardboard protected by me.
The journey became increasingly interesting. There were plenty of seats for humans. But precious few for chairs. It fit snuggly in the space meant for the refreshment trolley. No one bothered. Not an eyelid batted. No authority brandished. Perhaps this was not an odd sight. Perhaps people carry chairs on the trains every day.
With many levels. Rather than carry the chair up the busy escalator, I took the lift. The doors opened. I entered. Four other people entered with me. They were looking everywhere except at the man with a roughly wrapped chair over his shoulder. The speakers crackled to life. ‘If you see something that doesn’t look right, speak to staff or text the British Transport Police. See it. Say it. Sorted’.
’I think they mean me’ I said out loud. Suddenly everyone was in on the strangeness of the situation. Laughing. Smiling. Relaxing. Sharing. Humans. In connection. An older lady said ‘You had to bring your own seat with you did you?’
Arriving on our departure platform, with its conspicuous lack of seating for such a major thoroughfare, it dawned on me, like the sun rising above the horizon, majestic and revelatory, that I could sit on the chair. Wrapped or not it was still a chair. This was world changing. Like realising that there are no rules. That no one is in charge. That no one actually knows what is going on. That anything is possible. That we can choose how we live. That love ignores distance, death and gravity.
While there were plenty of seats on the train to Birmingham, the train from Birmingham was another matter. It was packed. People debating whose seats were whose, sharing what their tickets said and lamenting the malfunctioning reservations system. It was the special kind of bedlam available on British trains at busy times and betwixt British people.
Oh the joy of carrying your own chair on the trains! The tension from earlier in my journey had evaporated and I settled down in the unused space amidst the luggage while the battle raged. A man in a suit, who had been in good humour, discussing with various others the intricacies of temporary seat ownership, paused when he saw me. Smiling across the carriage he said… you’ve guessed it… ‘Brought your own seat eh?’
I asked a nice young man just across the no mans land between rows of seats to take a photo of me. He smiled and obliged with a giggle. The serious and very smart looking, middle aged business woman sitting opposite him broke her mask and became a fully animated human being and shared in what had become quietly playful.
What had seemed risky and fraught with potential for disaster at the beginning of my journey had been revealed to be enlivening and connecting. The usual withdrawl inwards when in public spaces had been dissolved. Peoples edges, even if only for a few moments, had expanded outwards and our lives had touched each other. Plus, I did not want for somewhere to sit all day!
Arriving in Oxford I carried the chair, on my own shoulder, off the train and towards its new home. Passing the Saïd Business School I was surprised and delighted to see a sculpture of, well, pretty much who I had been all day. Now this, by any measure could be thought of as odd. That I was passing during the short period when this sculpture was in place, carrying a chair and a bag, and set it down just next to the sculpture, is, well, unlikely. Or perhaps it isn’t because there would have been nothing to notice if it hadn’t been there.
A short walk along now familiar roads and I was at the front door of the new home of The Lost Chair. An eventful day. A journey of discovery. A great and totally unexpected way to connect with people. To discover the people inside the bodies that move around and whom we live alongside without ever knowing. I might carry unexpected items on trains again sometime. Just to see what I find.