Sometimes, a train journey

All writing must be done at least three times. The first draft has too many digressions and well, quite frankly, sometimes rants and raves in an uncouth manner about whatever is in the immediate environment.

Cliche can be avoided as one goes along, phrases such as ‘the bleak moors’, an ‘iconic building’ don’t need to be written in the first place. Nonsense phrases such as ‘reaching out’ and ‘be yourself at work’ may sound daring in corporate environments but they do not fit with real life.

One must feel one’s way into a piece. This generally entails allowing the mysterious inner voice to take over. One day this might be understood. But we don’t have the science or the culture to understand it yet.

I had drawn a line on a piece of paper that lay white and flat upon the desk. The line didn’t really go anywhere. It ended at the edge of the A4 shape.

I imagined that this line became an invisible thread and set off, up on to the white cliffs and then flew gracefully over the channel, looking down occasionally at the container ships and crude oil tankers.

Would it pass through Paris or Brussels? It turned out that it avoided both. It went through the countryside, skimming over the tree tops of the Ardennes and then followed the Moselle to Koblenz and the Rhine towards Mannheim and Mainz.

This line is as thin as the silk of a spider’s web and of extraordinary strength. It is composed of a physical material that has yet to be discovered or invented. There are many such new materials to come. Potentially. If climate crisis, fascism or nuclear war don’t ruin everything. It seems impossible to even write such things; but such things are becoming ever greater threats.

Sometimes the line soars high above the clouds and at other times comes skipping over the wavelets on the river Main and then to Nuremberg and circles over Munich. And now along the valleys and hills and along the edges of the Alps.

There is a dusty red and golden glow on the horizon. That’s Vienna. The line ends its journey there, in a small municipal park. I’m not sure of the exact location. The line takes a breath or two. Enjoying the shimmering movement of the air and the sense of un-motion on the ground.

And now it starts to tug. Gently at first. Need to think about what books to take. A few days pass and the line that appeared to end at the edge of a piece of A4 is pulling stronger now. The house needs to be sorted out. Time to start packing.

The line is enjoying Vienna and wants some company. I can feel it each day now. Lists are being made. Quantities of pens and pencils and drawing equipment assembled. Books constantly being taken from the shelves and a few pages read.

There are two definites. Both large and heavy. Red Vienna by Eva Blau and Rebel Modernists by Liane Lefaivre. The latter was a present and I still wonder with an emotion of intense graditude at the person who bought that book for me. How could they know that I would like this book so much?

Presents are lovely; thoughtful presents have a certain aura. It is like being presented with a new friend; all ready made and idealised and both knowing that everything will be well.

Then some possibilities. I am looking for books that will facilitate atmosphere. I consider taking Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Surely that needs to be read during cold English late Autumn days. It’s a wet afternoon book when the light fades early and tea and cake can be served and it’s known that there is a good supper for later on.

I’ve been reading The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig in fragments. On the morning of the day that I need to leave it takes off. That’s definitely coming. It is literature, real writing, with life in each and every page. There is a throwaway intellectualism and understated wisdom in his writing. And this means there is a great deal to be learned and enjoyed.

Less attention had been given to Gestalt Therapy by Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman and Ralph Hefferline. The idea of going to Vienna convinces me of taking that. I leave behind Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos and wish I hadn’t. But I should be able to get a copy in the city.

I should have spent Monday tidying the house and packing. However there was a book on the kitchen table that kept interrupting; Bond Street Story by Norman Collins.

I have been wanting to read this book for some time but a question hung in the air. If it was started before the holiday then it would have to be taken, half-read across half of Europe. That feels like a bit of a waste of suitcase space. A whole unread book would be better.

Or it could be started and left to create a maddening sense of ‘what happens next’. There was one other option that seemed gleefully indulgent. If I started now I could probably read it in one sitting even if it meant staying up into the early hours.

I picked it up and the direction of the day was now determined. There are many good one-liners and comedy vignettes. The scene with Sir Harry and Marcia in the hotel room continues to well up in my consciousness and produces much inner mirth. I couldn’t read past 1 am. But there was only forty or so pages left. I finished those with a cup of tea first thing the next morning.

And now I must travel and take memory snapshots of the stations, trains, streets and buildings. A girl is sitting at the end of the platform at St Pancras. She is reading a book, wears bright red nail varnish and I’m sure she’s smoking a cigarette. But in a second or two the train has passed and the photograph has gone.

The man who sits next to me at the Eurostar waiting area is enormous. Everything about him is huge. Feet, hands, legs. It’s suprising he manages to fit into the small-ish brown plastic seat. An elderly couple arrive and make to sit down on part of the chrome tubes. He insists in giving up his seat, as do I. They are at first reluctant but they both say ‘thank you’ gratefully and with meaning; what is this? Power and emotion? Just some words, a gesture, we catch each others eyes, a second or two of emotional exchange.

These things happen a million times a day. Everyone feels a lot better for it; ethically, morally and psychologically. But here come the haters, shouting and spitting, jabbing fingers, eye-popping and blue faced with bile. It’s difficult. Without the financial power of right-wing interests the hate-mob would be smaller and weaker than it is. We will never beat this with money power for we simply do not have those sort of resources. The poet Shelley describes a moral force. But how is such a thing to be organised and set in motion?

I walked around the waiting area at St Pancras on the off-chance that I might meet someone I know. Some of those I would dearly like to meet are now sadly dead. They would have made fine travelling companions.

On the travellator I am aware of someone behind me. I pull my suitcase towards me,
‘Do you want to get past?’ I ask,
the woman who is standing there produces the nicest smile I’ve seen all day,
‘No, there’s no rush’, she says, still smiling,
I’m lost for words. Taken aback at something she carries within her self, that is her self.

And slowly and all at once it feels as if I really am going on holiday. A great deal has happened to get to this point, far too much in many ways, with the constant backdrop of the wear and tear of daily life. There hasn’t been time to feel excited, too much to do in the previous weeks. Which means that when the sense of leaving work behind begins to glow, it glows with a brighter fire.

For a few pounds I’ve upgraded on the Eurostar. This is how train travel – any travel – should be. Big, comfortable, spacious seats. Enough room for the luggage to be stored.

A trolley comes around and a light meal is served up with a small bottle of French white wine. The man who serves it says he doesn’t drink but, he adds, ‘French wine is supposed to be good’. I am impressed by the naivity of this. It’s gauche rather than satire.

After a respectable interval he appears again with a small bottle of red wine on a tray. And it is wonderful, and that my friends, is how life can sometimes be.

The train is boucing and rolling slightly. When aeroplanes bounce and roll I find it terrifying. But this gently rocking is cradle like. There is nothing to do in the tunnel itself but sleep. And that sleep is a separation from one world and another. It’s the bass line in Bowie’s Sound and Vision that pulls me into sleep. I am listening to its hypnotic rhythm, into a dream state, and when I awake there is France, bathed in a radiant glow.

The light is golden with the surprise and majesty of the end of summer. The trees are so heavy with leaves they may burst with pleasure. The first daubs of copper and gold are appearing in the dense mass of woods and copses. The grain has been harvested and round bales of straw are stacked in lines in the fields.

The importance of the harvest is felt in the countryside, a memory of the mediaval period, it will be time for festivals soon, the earth will complete another journey around the sun.

The sunlight is getting underneath the clouds, pouring through the gaps and holes in divine flashes. The sky is a hundred shades of blue. The air itself has become a mass of golden atomic particles.

The fight for socialism must include this too.