6.32pm. The scenery remains amazing. The train flies on, the fields near Balcombe, wide, vast, green, panoramic, exploding into view at 120km/h just as the chorus from Snow Patrol's "Run" comes crashing in. Damn, what's that in my eyes?
6.39pm. The sun's out in force again. Really perhaps should have bought those Pumas from the lovely Emily for this trip, but then £60 is £60!
A very pleasant-looking couple, neither of whom can be older than 19, have crept into the next bay of seats in front of me and facing me in the carriage for a clandestine 50-minute cuddle, under the mistaken impression that they can't be seen. (In truth they are placed such that it would be impossible not to see them at some point!). She is lightly freckled and petite with a light-brown long Sarah Jane Smith haircut, he is a callow, slender, freckled, youthful blond. And for each of them the sun absolutely shines out of the other. Nobody and nothing else exists. Ah, youth. You make a decrepit old man very happy. But Brighton is good at bringing out the youth and excitement and dreams in everyone. I've had a brilliant time. Malverns, Ely, Cambridge, York, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Southend, you're all on notice, you've got some act to follow. Brighton is special, in ways that aren't completely explicable. But parts of it feel very...me. A little bit like James Hilton's Mr Conway and his Shangri-La, I do hope that I can make it back here again soon.
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