Steamy Train Tales smut scribbler B.R. Lee ventures down to London. But what was going through his mind during it all?

Earlier in July, after a considerable (I’m frankly embarrassed to reveal the exact amount) time not being on a train, your silver fox scribbler finally rectified this. Not to be satisfied with a little local jaunt, Yours Truly had to make the trip to the ‘throbbing metrolopis’. London was indeed calling.

Is there a train line to hell that’s paved with good intentions?

I had hoped to spend the journeys writing smut and filling my mind with all sorts of delightfully dirty debauched thoughts. That didn’t quite happen. The previous evening I discovered that I’d not brought my laptop power cord home with me. So first thing in the morning I had to go and pick it up, rather than get an extra hour’s kip. At least I’d packed my bags the night before so there wasn’t too much to do before getting the taxi to the station.

I’d so hoped to write some smut on the train. I’d bought a laptop screen privacy filter just days before so that nobody sitting beside me could be outraged as descriptions of torrid bedroom gymnastics were being typed. I’d reserved the seat closest to the luggage racks at the end of the carriage, to minimise the risk of being seen from above and behind. But alas there was a big elephant in the carriage that had to be addressed. You see, my mind was preoccupied with apprehension and worry over my proficiency and subsequent performance for a paying client who’d paid a serious amount of money for my expertise.

As I headed south, I was both scribbling and typing, trying to prepare for the following day. In the end I gave up when approaching York and for the rest of the journey happily settled instead for just enjoying watching the world go by and realise that London was indeed calling. And then on the journey back north, I was absolutely knackered: exhausted from three hours of face-to-face client time running on only about two and a half hours of sleep and a frantic race against time to get to King’s Cross and onto my northbound train. Was I in any fit shape to start bashing away on my laptop? Not a hope. I was spent, physically and mentally.

Straight to work…at King’s Cross

Although I was too preoccupied and knackered to write smut on the train, there was an important mission to be accomplished within minutes of my arrival into King’s Cross. In contrast to my usual modus operandi of strutting towards the main concourse then heading down the escalators to the underground station, on this occasion I stayed put. No, it wasn’t just to catch another look at the cute, big-haired redhead who got on the train at Newcastle, although that was nice. I needed to capture some decent images for this here website: well composed, images of the hot Azumas standing at the platforms that would look mighty fine as featured images for blog posts, webpages and the like.

Mission accomplished.

While nobody would deny that railway track hardly oozes sex appeal, the composition of the photos is important. You’ll have already seen the images at the top of this post and the other webpages. Plenty of space is needed for the accompanying page/post description towards the bottom of the image. Hence, lots of track and platform.

The descent

Before heading to my overnight residence however, there was more to be done: firstly, a whistle-stop bout of retail therapy. It wasn’t lost on me that this was the first time I’d been back to London – my previous home for several years – since 2019. How was I going to feel when having lived like a relative monk for the past couple of years (okay, there had been some well known circumstances preventing the same amount of carefree travelling as before 2020), and here I was now getting back onto the tube and just simply reacclimatizing oneself to the sights, sounds, and smells of London?

As I descended to the ticket area of the underground station and went about adding some money to my Oyster card (finding out that I still had £4.30 on it from my last visit: bonus!) it became apparent that everything was fine. In one sense it felt weird that this was the first time I’d been back in two and a half years, compared to 2019 and before, when I’d been travelling down to London and back up like the proverbial jack in the box. But then on another visceral level, it just felt…well, it just felt…normal. I was back.
Yeah, dammit, I was back, Baby!

I smiled as I smelled yes, that, smell of the London Underground as I reached the platform of the southbound Victoria Line. By crikey, it smelled great.

Welcome to the jungle

During my previous – and very regular – visits over the years I’d invariably cue up ‘Welcome to the Jungle‘ by Guns n’ Roses on my phone to listen to as I emerged from the first tube station since arriving into London. Tradition naturally dictated that I upheld this practice. But was it more relevant now than before?

Getting off at Oxford Circus I then quickly headed westwards to pop into a jeweller’s to see if they had a watch that I had my eye on. They didn’t. Darn. Ach well: it was opportunistic and something I only decided upon as I got nearer to London. I’ve since bought another one similar to it, so no harm done.

My next stop however had long been thought about in the preceding days and weeks before my journey. Enroute I walked down Bond Street, where Ralph Lauren’s large emporium was in full-on, ‘anyone for tennis?’ mode due to their involvement as clothing supplier for all the on-court officials at the Wimbledon tennis tournament that was being held at the time. Very swish. Very….Ralph. I marvelled at how good it was to once more strut past the opulent shop windows belong to the most desirable luxury brands on the planet. Asprey, Boodles, Breitling, Chanel, Gucci, you name it, they’re all there on Bond Street.

Let’s smell…really (and I mean, really) delicious.

Crossing Piccadilly I proceeded to walk down St. James’s Street then turn onto Jermyn Street. For those not au fait with London’s famous shopping streets, Jermyn Street is the man’s street, running parallel with Piccadilly, and is home to a whole host of famous names selling their wares to the dapper chaps in town. And before too long, I had reached my next destinaton. I tried to freshen up and look presentable (let’s just say that carrying my laptop bag and a smaller rucksack as I walked from Oxford Circus all the way down to Jermyn Street in about 22 degree heat, left me a little hot and sticky) before entering the esteemed purveyor of fine fragrances, Floris.

How do I begin writing about Floris, the British perfumer that’s existed since 1730 (you read right: nearly 300 years old), has a Royal Warrant, and has supplied its gorgeous products to the likes of Florence Nightingale, Winston Churchill, Ian Fleming, Cary Grant, and Marilyn Monroe? In short, I’m going to leave it to the company themselves, with this lovely insight into their Jermyn Street store.

I’d promised myself that when I was next down in London I was going to visit their shop and buy something that smelled amazing. I also know that it would be one of three fragrances that I already knew and occasionally wore (thank you Oxford Street department stores for all those times in previous years when I’d pop in and spray myself with Floris from your perfume sections!).

About ten minutes later I left armed with a bag containing a bottle of this utterly gorgeous scent.

Shopping done, now it was time to do a bit of prep for the following day. This involved walking through the lovely streets of St. James’s, down to Pall Mall, over into Carlton Gardens and then down on The Mall, through the delightful St. James’s Park (probably my favourite park in London. And yes, they have pelicans. Pelicans? In London ? Oh yes.) before catching up with some people after such a long time apart. Lots of handshakes and bringing each other up to speed on what had been going on in life and general.

Now it was time to get to where I was staying for the evening. After walking from Oxford Circus down through Mayfair, St. James’s, across the park, and now in and around Westminster with two bags, I couldn’t face another walk or public transport for the relatively short onward journey.
“Taxi !”

Fast forward a couple of hours and I’m showered (bliss!) and ready for dinner – wearing my lovely new Floris fragrance of course. As I was staying close to Waterloo station I had optimistically envisaged having dinner close by and then entering the terminus to indulge in some more picture taking to add to the image library. But I was pooped. So I stayed in and dined in the downstairs restaurant. A succulent steak, lovely salad, fries, and washed down with a wonderful large glass of Malbec.

Afterwards, I headed back to my room and tried to relax, in anticipation of the following day.

What a performance: and now, the station!

As it turned out, all the previous stress and racing of one’s mind was needless: I turned in another consummate performance and left clients happy and suitably impressed. So much so that I now had to quickly, and I mean really quickly, get down to the tube and begin my race back to King’s Cross for the train back to Bonnie Scotland. Thank the stars that the Victoria Line trains always seem to go like the absolute clappers.

While I actually made it to King’s Cross with time to spare, thus allowing me to buy some drinks and snacks from the station shops, I was nonetheless hot, sweating buckets, and exhausted. I was drained from the race across town to get here and also starting to adrenaline crash as well. I’d got onto the train a good five or so minutes before anyone else so I could freshen up (as best as possible – thanks once again, Floris!) alone and uninterrupted. I always check out the trains on the platforms to ascertain which one is mine, well before it is announced on the huge departure boards in the main concourse. Destination details on the electronic displays on the side of the coaches are a good clue; better yet are onboard catering crew members who might be on the platform beside the buffet carriage: they always happily tell you which train it is. Remember that top tip, sexy train travellers.

“Is that all I am to you: a quick one night stand?!”

Not too long later, my Azuma started pulling out (ooer!) of the lengthy platform to begin its journey to Edinburgh, confirming my time in London had come to an end. Even though I’d stayed a night, it really felt like a whistle-stop stay with hardly any time for me to do much soul searching and retrospection on the impact of being back in London again and my thoughts about it, after a couple of years of exile.

On the train back, the mind began wandering but not in the provocative places one would have hoped for. Adrenaline crashes, physical exhaustion and lack of sleep do these things. Then at Newark, the researved seat next to me became occupied all the way up to Edinburgh by someone who within the first ten minutes of plonking herself down beside me, wasted no time in sticking wireless headphones into her lugs to watch tv dramas on her tablet. The problem was that the sound leakage from her headphones was annoying to say the least. So much for being in a quiet coach, eh? Two can play at that game, then. Going ‘scorched earth’ gave me a modicum of satisfaction as I warmed up Spotify on my phone and started the proceedings with ‘Painkiller’ by Judas Priest. The rambunctious and amplified nature of the music coming into my ears didn’t let up until approaching Edinburgh.

Ascending from Waverley Station into the bright summer Edinburgh evening was a lovely moment. My absence from ‘Auld Reekie’ also had been far too long. Not that I had too much time to savour it as I had a coach to catch for the final journey home. But I did manage to quickly take a snap of one of the city’s finest erections: one that doesn’t result in anyone being arrested and charged with gross indecency.

A couple of hours later and I was back home. I was knackered but alive and with not much time to spare before bedtime and returning to work the next morning.

Final thoughts…

Given that I was either pre-occupied or exhausted respectively on the trains down and back, it’s probably for the best that some time has passed before offering my thoughts on everything.

To begin with, it was my first time being on an LNER Azuma, and the experience was a positive one. The legroom was decent, which isn’t always the case for someone over six feet tall. Each seat has its own power socket so another thumbs up there. I didn’t indulge too much with the onboard catering, but will say that their Fruit Cake Slice is absolutely GORGEOUS. I bought one on the trip down and having loved it, decided to buy two (along with some shortbread biccies) on the return trip. As well as being gloriously fruity, there’s also a wonderful warm, spicy element to the proceedings. If you like a bit of spice, this absolutely hits the spot.

As for being in London itself, it was great to be back but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some trepidation ahead of it. Since 2019 media attention devoted to marauding moped robbers, pickpockets, knife crime and thieving mobs rushing into shops, has seemed to increase. Did Axl’s lyrics carry more weight this time around?

I’ll admit that I didn’t exactly break myself in gently when of all the places I could have exited from the tube in central London, I chose Oxford Circus! The sheer number of people walking around or taking selfies was, for a few seconds, a bit of a shock to the system compared to my relative exile in the middle of Scotland. If I hadn’t had such a tight schedule that afternoon and had more time to dwell on it, then yes, maybe it would have been a bigger consideration. But instead I just took a few seconds to absorb the number of people, and my present location, and then get to work on the task at hand. I was back, and I was dealing with it. And as I left Oxford Street and started heading into Mayfair, it was as if I hadn’t been away. No need for Google Maps: I was like a homing pigeon heading towards my destination.

Oh come on Lee: what about the women, and the naughty thoughts? This is what we want to know!

Sheesh, you’re a tough audience, hehe.

In a nutshell, though, I was actually surprised. And not pleasantly. London is normally a cornucopia of crumpet, a smorgasbord of sexiness and whatever other metaphors suggest the same.

But this time, it was different. Believe you me, I may have been in a hurry to get from A to B to C and D, but throughout my life that’s never stopped me from spotting fantastic fillies yards away or closer on the pavements. But the reality was that this time around, whatever the reason(s), I just wasn’t seeing ’em to anywhere near the same degree as my usual trips to the capital. What was going on? Most unusual indeed.

But there were *some* promising moments on my travels. The girl in the short white summer dress sitting on the platform bench at Haymarket. My mind sprung into action. Would she have welcomed a dapper chap saying hello to her and starting a conversation, or was she showing too much resting bitch face? The way her legs were crossed, exposing a delightful amount of tanned thigh underneath: was that *all* she was wearing? Hmm…definitely some food for thought – and a possible future character. And the redhead joining the train at Newcastle whose voluminous tresses couldn’t help but make one notice? Again, another possible character.

While the visual inspiration may have been lacking on this particular trip, it certainly didn’t dent my enthusiasm for Steamy Train Tales in the slightest. Far from it. It grew (and without any need for rubbing or lubrication for that matter). My thoughts and experiences reconfirmed that I’m on the right track (pun thoroughly intended) with all this. So farewell London: I’ll very possibly see you again in 2023. And as for you, Dear Smut-Lovin’ Reader, grab your tickets and sit in your allocated seat. I’m coming soon!