UK Trip 2005

Thursday morning. A perfect, beautiful, brilliant suunyblue 15-degree day as the train speeds towards Brighton. 52 minutes from London Victoria to Brighton station, stopping only at Clapham Junction and East Croydon on the way. A dream run. And English overground trains can be so SMOOTH sometimes! Wonderful countryside unfolding rapidly around us, but there's a striking amount of trackside clutter along the way from various official garbage dumps and open storage grounds. And there's something rather ugly taking shape just outside Earlswood...a huge stripped section of land with a confusion of concrete reservoirs and bulldozers forming a large brown scar on the landscape. The walkman is on, the sun is shining, the southern English landscape still strikes dumb, and the train must be closing on 120km/h with no apparent effort at all. Suddenly this is the best of everything. Bloc Party. Electric Soft Parade. The Lambrettas. The Who. Oasis. The Ordinary Boys. Bent. The Smiths....ah. Funny how your thoughts can ambush you like this. Music can fuse with other things in your view to lift your mood dramatically and suddenly, so suddenly sometimes you catch your breath. Then THAT song triggers something. And then you start thinking back. When did you first think this kind of trip would be a good idea? When did you first know you really wanted to do this, and with whom? Sigh. To absent friends...even those absent by choice. This trip, or something like it, with the sun shining and The Smiths on the radio, was dreamt of when you were much younger, and as a two-hander. And now you're here...Erm, right. Where did the last ten minutes go? Someone said "Here's Brighton". Next Previous

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Andrew L

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ukmay05@yahoo.co.uk