wellieswithwings

bubble

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 | brighton, london, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Murky Monday morning and my train pulled into Burgess Hill station. There, standing alone and removed from her group of friends was a little girl in her red school jumper, staring up the platform for her train south.

One look up from my Kindle and I was transported back to crisp autumn mornings, waiting at the bus stop up the road from my parents for my navy blue school bus. On a main road, but in a village; my memories of those few minutes every morning are of bird song, frosted grass crumpling under foot and something countryside clean. That fresh air. Those greeny browns of the falling leaves. That crunch of unbroken frost. The silence.

I realised that the greens, browns and golden sunsets that I catch out of the window each day have given me a sense of the silence and calm of the countryside. Together with the book on my lap they have created a bubble for me, between one City and the other city.

I’m writing this on my way home, trying to map at which sections of the journey this bubble closes round me. There’s the rush through the tube, but I now find this automatic and barely think about where I am. Once on the train I find My Seat, and before I take off my coat I realise I’ve pulled my Kindle from my bag and laid it on the table. I’ve always read a lot but I currently get through about four books a week. This makes my Kindle purchasing history since I was given it in June, somewhere around 50 books.

The fifteen minutes to East Croydon are still the City, the carriage is fuller, the voices are louder and these are the minutes I sink back into the story. There is no bubble yet, but as we pull out of the station and through the suburbs, trees line the tracks and I am enclosed.

There is a section around Three Bridges where sometimes sudden flashes of bright gold hit the screen and I turn to beautiful rolling clouds, drenched in a pink gold sunset. The sky seems wider from a train window but it’s only a glimpse and my eyes lower, bubble unbroken.

The one place that I consciously raise my head on each trip is Balcombe viaduct. I look up and out at the fields below and this evening am rewarded with a pink red sun, only a sliver of crescent above the blackened distant trees.

Around Burgess Hill and Hassocks I can occasionally smell the glorious scent of wood smoke, and yearn for log fires whilst snuggling further down into my seat and my book.

And my bubble carries me through to Preston Park, when the other city grows close and home beckons, reality starts to seep in.