Brain Training

Dear Mum,

I’m accelerating though Kentish countryside. An Autumnal mist levitates above extensive fields and mystifies my vision of settlements beyond it.

My mind fills with fictional thoughts; Bobbie running toward her long-lost father in ‘The Railway Children,’ Dickens rescuing his ‘Our Mutual Friend’ manuscript from the wreckage of a train accident, Margaret Hale first glimpsing Milton from a railway carnage in ‘North and South.’

Why does a train inspire one’s imagination? No other form of transport encourages such romantic ponderings.

Car journeys are pretty mundane – there is certainly nothing rousing about the M25.  As for aeroplanes, we invest our time in napping or in-flight entertainment. And the constant expanse of cloudy space is arguably less enthralling than the elaborate landscapes that run parallel to railway lines.

It could be the vantage points a train offers. One cannot help but marvel at the new sights and topography a train offers.

Or perhaps it is the escapism. Leaving the slog of working life and tedium of the real world, one must simply witness a realm outside of one’s own world.

I think the speed of the train triggers the acceleration of my mind, as neurones attempt to catch up with the locomotion.

Bobbie and Margaret are joined by foreign creatures who inhabit the environment my train passes through. These are the workings of my imagination. They dance about my mind, desperate to tell me their story and accompany me.

My train pulls into the station and the creatures evaporate.  I will have to return for my return journey to greet them once more...