Stalin Ate My Homework by Alexei Sayle

Author:Alexei Sayle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography
Published: 2011-09-04T14:16:56+00:00

While we were in Budapest we also paid a visit to the railway run by my fellow comrades in the Hungarian Young Pioneers. Not only did they run it, in the early 1950s they had actually built the twelve kilometres of narrow-gauge line that ran through the Buda hills. The carriages were painted red and white and seemed to be about half the size of a standard coach, though with normal seats and luggage racks, so I felt a bit like I was riding through a forest in one of the passenger cars from my Hornby train set.

Nearly all the work was done by children, who bore a serious, pompous, self-important look as if the chess club at school had been given their own railway to run. The junior guards and adolescent signal operators were dressed in the normal Young Pioneer costumes of white shirt, shorts and red neckerchief but with the addition of a peaked cap, while for the more senior staff, such as the child stationmaster or juvenile ticket collector, there was a special dark blue uniform, a small-scale replica of what grown-up Hungarian railwaymen and railwaywomen wore. Clearly there were only a few of these uniforms to go round and they tended to be on the large side — the sleeves would dangle way beyond the boy or girl’s hands and their caps covered most of their heads. Their ill-fitting suits gave you the feeling that your ticket was being punched by one of the chimps that advertised tea on the television.

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