Train journey

Earlier in the week, I had to travel up to London for the day. Normally, I would have driven to Heathrow, parked, and taken the Underground into the city centre, but, on Elliot’s advice, I took the train instead: the Tarka Line from Eggesford (a few hundred yards walk from the house) to Exeter St David’s, and the Great Western from there to Paddington.

It’s been years since I travelled on the train, but I’m glad I did. In a car, I am rarely a passenger, and usually have to concentrate on driving on our cramped English roads; now, I could concentrate on the view.

Tall stands of yellow rape, escaped from cultivation, blaze defiantly from odd corners of pasture. Narrow boats glide lazily along almost forgotten canals, waiting patiently at the locks in a surreal, parallel, slow-motion world. Rivers meander, a temporary refuge for elegant swans and their cygnets, flanked by majestic willows casually draped over the water, their long fingers barely touching the surface. Cattle – black and white Holstein, golden-red Limousin – graze unconcerned in green fields spattered with thistles. Youthful, exuberant poplars tower over older, wiser oaks; frivolous birch flutter their leaves precociously in the breeze; horse chestnut grow heavy with their fruit, the “conkers” that will provide amusement for schoolboys in the autumn. Noiseless distant tractors ply through the fields or along country roads, past old brick farmhouses with tall chimneys; fresh cut hay lays drying in the sun, and fields are full of baled hay, in black polyurethane, or in rounds, or in squares. Church spires peep over the tops of trees, belittling their squat Norman peers – you can almost hear their peal, carried on the wind.

I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong.

Dairy farmers are going out of business, because it costs more to produce milk than we will pay them. Every now and then the train rattles through the cesspools of our towns and cities, with their graffiti and their supermarkets. Even the shiny new buildings are tomorrow’s urban decay. And the ebullient young man who has been talking to his “muvver” in “Redroof” (which may or may not be near Redruth, Cornwall) on his mobile phone in the “quiet” carriage of the train, announces loudly, on completion of his call: “Sorry to all the ‘quiet’ people. I paid for my ticket like everybody else, and if I want to talk on my mobile phone, I will.”

Lager brings out the best in everyone, doesn’t it?

“Every day it gets a little harder to believe in magic, and people” – Mindy Smith.