Train trip.

Pulling away from the city, sun drenches a Dutch painted landscape, skies all sharp blue and dazzle white clouded, flattening fields, pushing them inexorably toward the coast and the waiting North Sea. Picking up speed now, hurtling past wind stooped hawthorns, sewage works and Shetland ponies and a boy walking across a vast field with his head down. To my left, a group of Glasgwegians, off to the races. Tennents and banter. Turning, kneeling on the seats, hanging over the headrests, laughing, like bairns on a school trip. They are all my age. Loud, happy. Brick, houses, half timbered, gravel pits, conservatories, canals and traffic at a standstill. “Darling, if it’s too much then don’t, it’s your call, you’re in charge…….no I just thought…… no, I appreciate that, yes, I know, honestly you don’t have to…… ” The phone call ends. She turns to her daughter who says,”I don’t know why you bother Mum. Why do you?” “Because I love her”. Outside the day pulls us closer to London. Where is the point where the countryside ends and ther city begins ? I always try to look for the edge but am always left disappointed as the frontier blurs, seamless almost. Yet there is a change, perhaps it could be the combined weight of people and their stuff that causes the light to constrict, where the Flemish sky admits defeat, retreating as we push on through Betjamin country and the long ago, lost, Utopian suburbs. I turn back to my phone and scroll through the flotsam of ill advised words and the world does indeed dim slightly.