Train tracks: Return to red kite country (Part 1)

Back in red kite country, I take the train I took when I was a kid, but it is not the same train. It is sophisticated dark green, not garish blue and purple and yellow and red. There are power sockets in the walls (for phones and laptops only), and new seat coverings - no worn patches or felt-tip-pen doodles from years and years of secondary school students being carried to and fro along the Marlow Donkey line. There is no graffiti on the seat backs or in the vestibules. It is better in every way, but it is not my train. 

The fields flash past the window (that, at least, is still dirty) and they are familiar. The land changes much more slowly than the things that move upon it. The Thames is still the Thames - slow and dirty, temperamental and ready to flood at the first heavy rain. The ground here has been waterlogged for decades. The local government are forever declaring droughts and hosepipe bans, and it's always been a bit of a joke. Even in July, if you walk by the river, you know you are not only walking beside the water; you are walking on water too, just under your feet.

On the morning I catch the early train to start my journey north, the river mist is thick. The trees on the opposite bank loom like monsters, and the wealthy people's homes with their boathouses and sloping lawns look like haunted houses in some old-fashioned horror flick. A V of geese flies across the opaque greyness above us that blocks out the sky. The whole scene is ethereal, but it is a private screening. No one else in my carriage sees it because every single one of them is staring at their phones for the entire stretch from Marlow to Bourne End.

As we approach Bourne End station, the on-board screens no longer say 'Change for Cookham, Furze Platt and Maidenhead'. Instead, they tell us to 'Change for the Thames Path National Trail'. I change, but the train still calls at Cookham, Furze Platt and Maidenhead. I know this stretch well, although not as well as the Marlow-Bourne end section, which I have walked many times over the years. Still, I notice things. The plants growing on the embankment are the same, but some of the arable fields behind them are now a golf course. 

Men and women in suits board the train, commuting to work. Some are morose - already defeated on a Monday morning as they flop into their seats with a sigh and point their tiny smartphone screens at their faces. Others are chatty. The woman next to me, in a fabulous white suit, spots an acquaintance across the aisle in the row in front. They begin to discuss children and weekends away and upcoming summer holidays. "Three weeks!" the woman next to me crows. "I thought you meant you were staying three weeks in Greece!" And they crackle as if it's the craziest notion, going away for more than a fortnight in August.

I live in Greece, I think. That piece of information is neither here nor there, especially on this train rumbling through the English countryside. But, among all these suits and stress, it feels like a treasure. On this train, I feel pleasantly other - I also feel like a child. Maybe because I am wearing my teenage daughter's trousers and jacket and not a sharp designer suit. Maybe because most of the trips I have taken on this train were during my teenage years. Maybe it's because I can still imagine that I almost see Mirkwood through the mist hanging over the fields, and I don’t think that anyone else in my carriage can do that. As I head further and further north, changing trains, everyone is only looking at their phones, or tapping on their laptops. One man is reading a briefing, some are sleeping. An elderly woman eats her snack and then nods off, dropping her iPhone into the aisle.

The beautiful English countryside zips by - rolling fields of green and gold, cows and sheep and horses. Clouds stand in the blue sky like fairytale towers, reaching up to the realm of giants.

No one but me ever looks out of the window.