January morning 3: On the train

I drink my almost cold, microwave heated coffee, eat a sliced bread sandwich filled with a skim of butter covered with pear and apple spread. Opposite me, a tailored, tall, middle-aged man reads the Figaro newspaper. He wears frameless glasses, a well-cut winter coat, a tousle of grey hair and a whiff of aftershave. I imagine his midriff as plump, from too much Christmas foie gras. He has slip on black shoes and a neat beak of an acquiline nose. His mouth purses as he reads, pulling skin forward from a slowly sagging jaw. He would, I imagine tickle a grandchild with glee, sack an employee fearlessly and must of tasted the forbidden delight of une maitresse. At least, this is what I imagine from my seat on the train as we travel through an early January hour.

January morning 2: On the train

On the train, two teenage girls, in beige and black puffas, describe late nights, sleeping and lost loves, whilst a third, quiet girl listens. She scratches freshly washed hair with a bitten nail and fervently texts someone, somewhere. Under the citric glow of the carriage lamps, we speed through the early morning winter darkness. I drink black coffee, eat a spelt bread sandwich and dream of another day.

january morning 1: the pieces of my dream

As I lie in early January darkness, the pieces of my dream clamber from the sleep abyss, climb up using ropes, hands, legs and strengthened pelvic floor muscles, pulling themselves into my morning and an attempted awakening. The dream pieces struggle alone, chaotically, smells mingle with sound, until I put them together, join the pieces ensemble; trying to remember who went where and why, which dark-haired woman put on plays and lived in China and held my hand softly as I explained ? Why does the sun set so beautifully behind the University Georgian buildings, casting a cherished golden haze? And, who is the twinkle-eyed boy that I am chasing, chasing, chasing in the corridors? I grab some of the pieces and lay them in a line, try to create an order, a narrative, a something from the pieces. Then, I get up, get dressed and drink Chun Mee green tea as my family sleeps. The morning has begun.

winter

Winter is here, dark nights, cold rain, the wind blows us along the seaside streets. We pull out the sofabed, hide under the duvet and watch black and white films as the Christmas tree lights flash, red, green, red, red. Winter, the low sun casts our shadows like zebra stripes on the mustard sand. We push ourselves to walk alongside the waves that roll as thick as lion's manes. Winter, our eyes are tired when we wake in the morning, fill our mouths with hot Chung Mee green tea, sumatra coffee and long to lie in bed. We eat homemade bread, that I bake weekly, dough rising in tune to the smell of pine needles scattering over the toy-ridden floor. Winter, our bedroom is filled with boxes, brown cardboard masking endless delights. Winter, soon we'll be crossing the Channel, sliding over great waters to England, to family and friends, to tuck ourselves into a red-brick cottage, eat, drink and make merry. Winter, you are a half-loved season, sucking the blood from our too tired bones, wrapping us in cheery darkness, lit by a twinkling star.

June, July, August

Three months of summer have almost passed by, our worlds spinning, colliding, transforming. Nothing ever stays the same. Everything is moving. We've organised a funeral, grieved the loss of a close one and spent nights dreaming, quietly of death; long lost relatives and friends haunting sleeping hours, a kindly reminder of our ephemeral journey, our brief blink of time on this turning earth. Cruel nature. I listen to PJ Harvey let england shake on boats, London tube trains and in our van. I smile, shed a tear and sing along. At the side of the road is a chateau, with a For Rent sign à louer.

We escape the grief and drive down South, the little one gets freckles on her pale white nose, whilst the elder turns a sophisticated brown. We admire graffiti walls and flowers in Saintes.

We swim.

The water heals our bodies and minds. Wet, soothing, fingers and toes slice through turquoise matter; in structured swimming pools and free form lakes.

I work on the revisions to my manuscript - a little - I long to write on this blog, imagine posts and telling stories, things described in verbs and nouns, black and white attempts to capture an existence. I want to write about the thesaurus, old friends, death and healing; the utter unpredictability of life. Instead, I wash and fold clothes in the forest heat, wipe ice cream from noses and wander. I love this slowed down summer time, when tasks are unsqueezed from between writing, my hospital work, lecturing, school. Days breathe slowly, unhurried; in and out from the diaphram. Breathing deep from the belly. Folding clean clothes is a pretty life in clover.

We travel through the Spanish mountains in the Valle d'Aran, visit medieval villages with Roman walls built into Christian Churches (the stuff of ley lines and palimpsests), share food with old friends, sing songs about Eskimos and ask "Is that Brian Eno?". We eat menu del dia, with red wine served in pottery jugs, have garlic soup, catalan tomato bread and patatas bravas, café con leche and want churros with hot chocolate, but never quite find the time. Next year. Last night we watched a documentary made by Banksy about street art, ephemeral stuff, made in moonlight, guerilla-style, in your face, ART. The film also explores the trash/cash flip side of the art world, is Thierry really an artist or did Banksy make him up?

This from my collection of station graffiti. Pictures taken from trains in June. Little grubby urban hideouts were viewed through carriage windows at the start of these three moving months. June, July, August 2011; months of boats, vans and swims, the tumbling revolutions of life and death. But, that story is for another day...

the old man with the green bag on the train

The French high speed train stops at the station. The door opens. An old man steps in with a groan, carrying a large, worn rectangular canvas green bag. He's wearing shorts and a fluorescent sleeveless jacket. His skin is burnt a cherry red brown. There's an ugly whiff of old sweat, unwashed skin. He barks his destination at me. I answer and when he replies - in English- "Excellent", we get talking. He has a strange dent in his forehead, the size of a bullet, bloodshot red eyes. We chat about Spain, where he lives part of each year and France, where I live for all of each year.

"It's a cruel world now", he says, "There's no empathy, no kindness".

"I like your bag", I say, "Did you make it?"

He explains that he's had the green canvas bag for over twenty years. It contains his bike, a sleeping bag, a small tent and a change of shoes. "I'm in my late seventies", he says, "Every year I cycle the 800 miles between my house in Spain and a French port, to get the boat back to England. I've been on the road since March, but it got too hot, so I took the train". He wheezes, wipes bloodshot eyes with a crumpled checked handkerchief.

He describes how he cycles through the mountains, uses the pass where the pilgrims walk, "los peligrinos", he says in Spanish. "Saint Jacques de Compostelle", I say in French. He's been riding along the same mountain pass for over twenty-five years,

"I've met so many strange folk on that road. Last time, there were two Dutch women from Holland. They were pulling a cart by hand. I told them it's sixteen miles up that mountain. They just laughed. Sturdy they were".

When we arrive at the station, we get off together. "I'll just wind my way up to a campsite"he says with a smile. In the hazy brilliant orange light, I drive home, thinking of the old man and his rectangular green canvas bag.

the old lady in the waiting room

It is nearly ten o'clock at night. In the station waiting room an old lady sits next to a small red suitcase, eating blueberries from a plastic box. She places them, one by one, inside her mouth, nips off the stalk. Munches. Grabs another. Her jaw quivers. She holds the plastic box of blueberries on her lap on a plastic bag, that she's removed from inside another plastic bag. She folds the bags, with decisive yet trembling gestures, puts them in her suitcase for a later date. The bags look reused, as though they have travelled round the world, visited Peru and the African plains. She looks at me across the empty room. I am eating a salad from inside my own plastic bag, with a spare spoon that I carry for such occasions. I have a paper napkin spread over my lap, to catch the crumbs from a bread roll that I took from the hotel breakfast buffet. We bite, chew and swallow in two separate rhythms. A homeless man walks in, betrayed by worn shoes. When he leaves, she looks up at me, with watery blue eyes, "Has he gone?", "Yes", I reply. " No fear, god will protect us" she says, crocking an ear to catch my words. As she shows me her ticket, I discover she has missed her train, that the last one is leaving in only two minutes. I rush her down to the platform, through lifts and escalators, bundle her onto the high speed train. She suddenly asks me, "What is your name?", when I answer she replies, "I'll pray for you".