Tag: Trains

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A Thoughtful Sidetrack

I decided to add an optional soundtrack to this post so if you wish some aural accompaniment scroll down to the bottom for the marvellous Anxious Heart from the old yet fantastic Playstation game Final Fantasy VII.  The music first features (if memory serves) whilst the player negotiates a hazardous train graveyard and that is a good enough if slightly tenuous link for the post but also I think it fits so that’s alright then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_and_Longridge_Railway#/media/File:Deepdale_disused_railway_cutting_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1074958.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_and_Longridge_Railway#/media/File:Deepdale_disused_railway_cutting_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1074958.jpg

I came across this photo by accident and after marvelling at all the details it had to offer, sat wondering where such a tunnel would lead.

The obsolete railway line glimpsed briefly as I thunder by, peels off to a bygone era.  Overgrown and untended its track leads to the melancholy past.  Glimpsed through a steamed up window in cold weather, my thoughts melt into the heat of the train and the rhythmic gyrations lead me to doze and imagine the end of that forgotten line: Continue reading “A Thoughtful Sidetrack”

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In The Public Gallery

I thought this would make a nice sister piece to the previous post as that particular one resonated with a lot of people, it seems.  This time I cover the rest of the tenses – possibly quite tenuously – with some present and future musings.  Perhaps you can all start calling me ol’ romantic shoes or something.

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My mum once asked me why I analysed everything, to which I replied “doesn’t everyone?”  Dissecting things – metaphorically, I might hastily add –  is all very well and good but it’s not particularly interesting unless you add a dash of dreaming into the mix as well.

If I have one vice(!), its people watching.  I’m regularly gobsmacked by the thought of how anybody can manage to have a life.  It’s easy to imagine ourselves and our friends and such like but the world in general?  There are so many connections, so much action and thought streaming in from everywhere, it’s impossible to conceive of, let alone comprehend it all.  Still at least it’s fodder for my endless analysing fetish.

Personally I am convinced that everyone else is just standing still until I enter into the room and then they act like really people but secretly they are robots and I am the centre of the universe…but I could be mistaken.

Continue reading “In The Public Gallery”

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My Amsterdam Trip, Part 1

A classic Amsterdam scene, taken just across from our hotel whilst enjoying a coffee at the cheap and musically eclectic Trinity bar and café. Note the weird slantiness of all the buildings.

I’m really sorry if my writing is poor today but I’ve just come back from Amsterdam where nine of us went for a stag/bachelor party.  Excluding a school trip to Italy this is my first time away from England and also my first time flying, which is apparently the safest mode of transport there is. That’s what the man next to me said when he started a conversation then rapidly put his headphones on after I talked at him incessantly through my own white knuckle fear. Which wasn’t helped by the pilot telling us what to do if he shouts ‘Brace Brace’ in a doomed voice.

My first thought on going up was, ‘this is just plane wrong, haha, but seriously it’s not natural to be that many thousands of feet up in the air whilst trapped in a plastic tube, that incidentally had duct tape plastered all over the one wing that I could see. Nervous was an understatement but I was okay when I got over the cloud cover and I had no depth perception. I’d like to apologise to all the people who overheard and got bored by my nervous and constant chatter. Continue reading “My Amsterdam Trip, Part 1”

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Departure to Melancholy

Today I had a good day, I met a friend in Nottingham, planned to see any one of three film’s but missed them all, went to the Disney shop and then the pub, had a strange yet fun meal, a few drinks and a long chat. Followed by the inevitable dash for the last scheduled train for Lauren and then the usual yoyoing around the platforms for me as each screen was telling me a different departure platform. I Finally got on the train and then I was aware of the idea for this – whatever it is –  post starting floating around my mind.

The feeling must have sneakily crept up on me as I watched Lauren’s train leaving. I watched it go all the way until the last lights had disappeared out of sight. Then it was, that I was aware of a brooding sense of melancholy. Strange, as I know I’ll be seeing her again soon, and before you all start thinking it, we are just friends, that is all and it works well like that. So there.

Now I like the melancholy feeling I felt, strange as it is to say, it’s a pleasurable melancholy I suppose, something brought on by no definable reason and is good to wallow in now and again. It’s more than just the finality of the evening over, the sense of knowing I won’t be seeing a good friend for a while. And I daresay i’d feel the same with any of my close female friends (you know who you are).  It’s more that sense of the city slowing down and closing up, everyone abandoning it for a night in with friends and family that affects me. Continue reading “Departure to Melancholy”

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Tickets Please – Paul Atterbury

Trains don’t really bother me one way or the other…..however I am a man of romantic nature and that’s why enjoy the ambience of a good station. I like them, the small ones, the overgrown ones, even the forgotten ones.

What I like about them is the smell and the architecture, the quaintness and the slightly sad air of reminiscence for the glory days when the station was the hub of community life. Indeed the station I like for many reason to wit I am now going to bullet point, with a short explanation that you may or may not find informative or maybe you will just find the fact i’ve gone to all this trouble somewhat hilarious:

– Architecture; Muchos variation on this one! Many different styles were used, there was no uniformity in the main design although certain things were uniform throughout the station complex. I like architecture anyway, makes you feel close to history.

– Heritage; Apparently safeguarding English things is racist or something and as that’s not allowed anymore, I want to see what’s being maintained and how stuff looks today etc. You get the point methinks. Also I want to see what’s been left to us from them black and white days.

– Culture; Liking social/economic stuff (hardcore!) I am fascinated to see how the railway became the hub of life in villages and towns and what went on and how the closing of railways led to a ‘rebalancing’ of the economic structure and focus of towns etc.

– History; T’is I fear self explanatory. Continue reading “Tickets Please – Paul Atterbury”

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