Despite being a quiet town, there are 4 railway stations within its borders.

The first takes pride of place in the town centre, modernised inside and part of an ongoing regeneration by the local council. It leads to the big city in one direction and to all of the local coastal stops in the other. It is the last switching point between the big city and the diverging coastal areas, meaning trains are in ready supply.

The second was once part of a main line to the rural areas further away from the big city than the quiet town itself. It is now the terminating stop of the line, covering the southern area of the town; an area that, while not deprived, is devoid of anything worthwhile.

The third sits near a grave yard in the hilly area of the quiet town. It’s as dead as the commuters.

The last sits in a wasteland that used to be a sprawling and vibrant community. A decade or so earlier, the area had started falling into disrepute, with mild gang activity and crime not an uncommon sight. Housing redevelopment was supposed to fix the problem. The people moved out, the old tenement houses came down, and the area has lain in rubble ever since. A desolate area.

Train stations: a metaphor for a quiet town.

There is a lamp post in the West End of a quiet town. It holds a sign carrying directions to an even quieter town nearby, but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is March.

Every March, inexplicably, something happens to that lamp post, something rather strange. You see, for several years now at the same time of year, a rather nice piece of steak is tied around the lamp post (using no tape or string, just the meat itself). It hangs there, rotting after a few days, yet giving out no smell, until it wastes away so much it falls to the pavement.

No-one knows who does it or why. Meat can be strange in a quiet town.

A television breaks in a quiet town. Relatively speaking, this means nothing. It’s not a profound cosmic event. It won’t mean anything to most people. Bruce isn’t most people. Bruce is a touch mad. Not in a scary or clinical way though. He’s just eccentric at times, in a charming rather than “let’s cross the street away from him lest he tries to borrow our shoe laces” kind of way.

Having been in the television repair business in the same spot for decades, he knows a thing or two about televisions too. In fact, he knows pretty much everything there is to know. Got a problem? Phone him up. If he needs to come out to repair it (perhaps you’re too infirm to bring it to him), you’ll likely hear his never-faltering battlecry of “Never fear, Bruce is here” followed by an analysis of the TV based on the symptoms (without looking at) which is invariably correct.

Go to his shop, conveniently located just outside the quiet town’s central area, and you’re in for a treat. You’ll get explanations of how to quickly shunt the mask in your TV to fix discolouration, how you can fix your VCR problems with a hair dryer, or one of another dozen seemingly crazy solutions that always work and you won’t be charged to hear. It’s surprising that he has been open as long as he has with that kind of generosity.

Bruce, an eccentric TV repairman in a quiet town.

In a town near Glasgow, in the middle of a belt of towns and villages that stretch to the Ayrshire coastline, there lives a man called John. A man who is every bit a part of the towns heritage as the war memorials, the mills (and the well-known design that gave them fame in their day), and the abundance of churches. His life story is somewhat sketchy in places but the towns people who know him, and that amounts to most of the 74000 residents, know he has lived it his own way.

John is a survivor. He’s seen much of the town come and go, made it through a tragic disaster that killed more than 70 of his peers and, for much of his life, lived rough on the streets of this quiet town. Through bad weather and good, John has been seen in his favourite haunts and doorways preparing for the night ahead. Some say that he does not need to live his life this way, that his supposedly wealthy family could easily look after him. It’s the life he chose and that we must respect.

The townspeople know and love John. If, heaven forbid, anything were to happen to him, the funeral would be the best attended in the towns history. Understand, there are generations of families who have helped him whenever they can, going back many decades. If you ever see him, with his long coat and walking stick bumbling through the town centre, you may wish to do the same.

John, an iconic figure in a quiet town.

Carnivale: easily the best show I’ve seen in years. Season 1 screened in the UK last year on FX UK, and season 2 should be starting any time now. Just finished watching it and it’s stunningly good.

I’m a sucker for long, well-planned story arcs; the kind where stuff that happens in the background of episode 1 is resolved several years later, where the writer has the patience and skill to weave hundreds of tiny details into a masterwork. Dan Knauf has achieved this.

For those who haven’t seen it, it defies being turned into a blurb. The best I can do is to say that it centres around the depression-era dustbowl, and how two men (a priest and an escaped convinct) become the key players in a centuries old struggle. The other characters all have a story to tell from Lodz (the blind man who can see the future), to Samson (the dwarf who runs the show), to Management (the owner of the carnivale who controls the show from behind a curtain, never revealing himself or his plans for the protaganist). Expect to take in a lot of mythology on the way as well. Obligatory Day of the Dead and Templar mentions are present and corrrect.

The kicker? It’s been cancelled. What was a five year story arc, will stop now that two have been shown. Don’t let that put you off though, it does have enough finality to work as a decent ending, but it’s a little annoying that you can see the next few years falling into place (having already glimpsed the last scenes of the five years fairly early on).

Highly recommend watching both series and then looking at sites like Save Carnivale. Although they’ll likely fail, at least if they finish the story another way, you’ll know about it.