Train to London, May 2024 by Annamaria Murphy

It’s easier to stay in the familiar - in one’s own little corner of the world. 

And what the hell to pack for a country girl going to multiple cities to see multiple relatives?

Kernow is alive with green and spring. Ivy, hawthorn and sycamore tumble over the railway sidings, ferns lean into the railway tracks and Carn Brea is splashed with yellow and purples. Nature takes no notice of fences and borders, but in amongst the bluebell and campion, our detritus, our throw away and leave its lie, and there’s not much nature can do with it.

Over the bridge into Redruth: 

The turrets of the old library and chimney stacks mark the town. Its architecture speaking its stories loud. Old slippers doze amongst the gorse and heathers.

Past the hidden, unless you’re on a train, backyards and secret sheds, collections of waiting to be repaired vans and ploughs, long un-furrowed, tree roots growing amongst its mechanics. 

Plymouth:

My delightful company alights here. A trip that took months to arrange by their respite care staff. One of the adults, David, shouting in wonder on everything seen from the train window. 

“Windmill! Cow! Deer! Sheep! Red Tree!”, and when seen through his eyes, I could see how indeed wonder-full these things are.

It’s a simple and marvellous thing, a day out. 

Dawlish to Teignmouth: 

Low-tide coming into Teignmouth. Deer and flooded park land to one side, skeleton boat on the other-ribs showing, an old crow sits on top its mast on look-out. 

Sketches from Anna's notebook

London:

The 243 bus, Tottenham to Kings Cross.

We’re all in each other’s lives for a few moments, hours, days on a bus or train. Others lives are glimpsed at, imagined.

Last night a woman in a flowing black and silver gown pulled the emergency chain on the bus pulling it to a standstill. She claimed that she had seen her lost daughters who were very young. In fact, they were not young, and possibly not her daughters, and had missed the bus as their nails were not dry from a beauty treatment, an emergency of its own kind. 

Later on the 476, an elder of the community paid for a confused woman’s bus fare, so I gave her £5, then she blessed me with her god and sang a snatch of gospel before alighting 

Next day, The Hackney Canal Path: 

Along the canal, which is lined with houseboats, which would have once carried coal and every kind of supply to the city, there is every type of cyclist and runner.

Cyclists in lycra

Cyclists in hijab

Cyclists in flowing floral print

Cyclists with babies

Cyclists with dogs in carriages

Zoom deliverists

Cyclist in pink body suits

Cyclists with goggles, helmets, Rasta hats, earphones, antenna,

Beards followed by a bike.

Walkers, strollers, dreamers, a swan with her eight cygnets.

Jewish mothers with their stiff wigs.

Ducks, mallards, geese, drinkers, thinkers, bench sitters

And swallows.  

There will be more from Anna ... we will be sharing train journeys with more scribblings. The notebooks will be out, maybe with a focus on the branchlines ... AH