A plume of white smoke rises from the far hills. Three tugboats lie peacefully on the glassy water. The sky is clear. The rain has gone, taking with it all the gloom. The train rumbles over the mighty bridge. The houses perched precariously on the cliffs seem ready to tumble down into the water. My coffee tastes sharp but it refreshes me. The fields are white with frost. The naked trees stand purposefully to attention. A white horse looks cold and lonely as it searches for its breakfast. The train rattles on. A bald man reads a newspaper. A fat man sits like Buddha, arms folded. The sea hoves into view. Gulls loll about on the mirrored surface. A cormorant stands defiantly on a rock, wings extended. Dull grey houses peer down on a pretty little harbour. Buddha goes to sleep, dribbling a little from his plump mouth. An old man in an anorak walks a diminutive dog along the shore. The remains of old staithes sprout up like rotten teeth through wet sand. Mist masks the faraway purple hills.
The train passes a small, higgledy-piggledy town full of pleasing stone houses. On its periphery, an abandoned factory stands forlorn, its roof a shattered ruin. The tea-trolley girl wanders down the aisle, collecting rubbish. A young man with a stubbly beard \cradles his young child. It looks bewildered. A platoon of windmills stands idle in deep countryside. There is no wind; they are unemployed today. A carefully manicured golf course is tinged with frost. No-one is playing this morning.
The bald man flips his newspaper over to the arts page. His jacket is worn and untidy, his remaining fringe of hair long, greasy and unkempt. Buddha awakes with a start, opens a small notebook and starts to draw small concentric circles on a fresh page. A small graveyard sits on a hill, its gravestones arranged like drunken dominoes. The sun emerges more strongly and casts long shadows over the scattering of houses that abut the track.
Swinging inland, the train passes flooded fields. In a derelict railway yard, a phalanx of silver birches crowd out the decrepit buildings. Ice covers the puddles and pools that are scattered all over the brown fields. A mobile library slumbers on a country lane. Crows fly purposefully from one sodden field to another. A heron waits expectantly for fish to appear in a flooded section of farmland. As the train ploughs on, ponds turn into lakes, brooks into streams, streams into rivers and rivers into raging torrents.
Buddha sharpens his pencil and starts drawing little squares. A hamlet of newly-built houses resembles a prison compound. The train finishes its journey after an hour and a half. A sign on the overhead display board reminds me to take my belongings with me. I leave the train well short of my destination; I must continue my journey by bus. The floods have defeated the railway company’s efforts to run trains any further north.
