Night train
Flat grey country sliding past, tea going cold, someone still asleep
A wood-panelled sleeper compartment on a slow train, with the fold-down table caught in pale window light — a glass of tea in a metal holder, an open journal, a cassette recorder and headphones. Across the aisle someone sleeps under a heavy coat while the river and the church tower drift by outside. It is the quiet middle of a long journey, when there is nothing to do but write and watch.
Train, Day, Overcast, Melancholy, Lonely, Thinking, Travelling, Dim, Liminal
In this room
- A journal: what you write stays in the room, and only the people you choose can read it.
- A sound of its own — rain, a fire, a radio station to leave playing.
- A clock that keeps your time.
- A window with the real weather where you are.
- A note for the day, where you will see it.
- Frames for your own photographs.
- An assistant that knows the room and what you keep in it.
- A shelf for your files.
- A lamp that turns the room from light to dark.
- The lamps give a soft glow.
- After dark the same room has a night of its own, with its own light.