One for the road…

One for the road…

Childhood journey on a train

A rusty carriage, a musty half torn seat, smeared views out to the pale country air, double-glazing, creeping train purrs past family, railings, platform, miniatures in a montage. I eye the gangway for a pretty female visage.

An aroma of shorn felt mingles with fresh coffee cup. Cigarette ash stirs in the cold breeze from vents. A hard flavoured edge in the throat. Lateral swerve, a rickety motion. A pernickety looking older lady in thick black spectacles passes up her bags into the stow rack above, and takes her seat directly facing. Ropey view ahead, love.

Bracing sideways, a succession of scenes shuffling, open fields, electric wires, pylons momentary, fleeting, makeshift built up scenes, smoky towers, backs of factories, broken windows, a show-reel of graffiti washing walls

along the line. Systematic defacing by treaty.

By-product of conglomerated spaces. Protest at new faces, of Mammon, industrialization, urbanization. Piling yet more filth upon filth. Or is it the re-tracing of man’s destructive energies — into art. I would sometimes ask. Or something of that ilk.

I always remember that great fat Dunlop sign be-specked in soot and grime, my spirits rising as I was proudly reminded of my Dunlop tennis racquet and shoes — I never made that connection with their tyres, too.

Childhood journey on a train