Journey time

As the train whips through the sunlit countryside, I feel as if I’m in a movie. A mystery girl on a train, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, an unidentifiable tune playing through her earphones, foot softly tapping as the scenery blurs past the grimy window.

It’s a glorious, ecstatic summer morning, and everything we pass is touched by magic. Poppies shout scattered scarlet across the thick fields of corn and wheat. As the wind gently stirs the stalks, colours race up and down the fields, rippling silkily up into the trees. Smudged trails criss-cross the wedgewood sky; above them stretch wisps of fine high clouds, blown joyfully, carelessly, by the makers of the morning.

Occasionally the countryside is broken by malls, warehouses, carparks, stamped into the landscape; Carpet Right, Comet, PC World. Cars crawl along the roads, their shiny carapaces glinting, and then they are gone.

Allotments, jumbles of ramshackle sheds, lovingly crafted beds of vegetables, beans raspberry trellises, sunflowers. Green plastic watering cans lie side by side with hoes and rakes. A cat sits on a roof and stares as we rattle by. Faceless stations flicker past, part of the child’s scrawl of human habitation. The waiting passengers seem trapped in time, motionless on the platforms.

And then slowly we pull into the teeming, stinking, oblivious London station. The train opens its doors and abandons us to the city. My daydreams of a fateful assignation evaporate, and mingle with the petrol fumes, are drowned out by shouts and car horns. I want to spread my arms and spin round and round, until the city falls at my feet.

But instead, I smile, put my sunglasses back on, and head to work.