(no subject)
I travelled up to Newcastle this week for a meeting. I was up at 5am to catch an early train, and the walk through the silent sleeping city was made filmic as well as beautiful thanks to a fortuitous selection from my iPod's shuffle. The road glistened in the dark like a slug. Autumn had come: the pavements were wet collages of flat, five-spoked leaves. There were puddles that looked like pools of pure black, but edged with gold where the slight inclination of water tension caught the orange lamplight. Occasional cars passed me with heavy, wet, rhythmic sounds. The weather was poised: when the sun crept up the clouds would be visible, but for a while there everything was still and pure and clean.
Newcastle itself slid from meetings into a fairly drunken slew of bar tabs and inappropriate behaviour and shameless gossip-mongering. I got a few hours' sleep, then staggered back to the station for the return journey.
I finished The Good Ship Venus on the way back, wedged into a window seat, unkempt, hungover, wrapped in my John Rocha wool coat, immaculately happy in the cold sunshine which poured through the glass. Texts from Hannah buzzed through in my hip pocket. Next to me sat a Scottish man rubbing his eyes and coughing roughly, and drinking can after can of McEwan's Export. This was 9:30 in the morning. He rounded breakfast off with a brace of sausage rolls from the canteen. Then changing at Retford for the tiny single-carriage connector service to Lincoln, a ride where I was distracted from my Christopher Logue book (I always have a spare) by the indescribably wonderful legs of whoever was sitting in the row in front of me. Unfortunately she spoiled it by pulling out a magazine and becoming engrossed in an article headlined GRAN BOUGHT ME BOOBS FOR MY BIRTHDAY!
I felt pleasantly dishevelled and full of creativity and amazement. Being in motion, over whatever distance, always sorts me out.
Newcastle itself slid from meetings into a fairly drunken slew of bar tabs and inappropriate behaviour and shameless gossip-mongering. I got a few hours' sleep, then staggered back to the station for the return journey.
I finished The Good Ship Venus on the way back, wedged into a window seat, unkempt, hungover, wrapped in my John Rocha wool coat, immaculately happy in the cold sunshine which poured through the glass. Texts from Hannah buzzed through in my hip pocket. Next to me sat a Scottish man rubbing his eyes and coughing roughly, and drinking can after can of McEwan's Export. This was 9:30 in the morning. He rounded breakfast off with a brace of sausage rolls from the canteen. Then changing at Retford for the tiny single-carriage connector service to Lincoln, a ride where I was distracted from my Christopher Logue book (I always have a spare) by the indescribably wonderful legs of whoever was sitting in the row in front of me. Unfortunately she spoiled it by pulling out a magazine and becoming engrossed in an article headlined GRAN BOUGHT ME BOOBS FOR MY BIRTHDAY!
I felt pleasantly dishevelled and full of creativity and amazement. Being in motion, over whatever distance, always sorts me out.