On the train again. We’re all different I know, but this morning I’m more excited about the journey to work than actually being there.
I think you’re supposed to see the commute as a sort of necessary evil, but how could it be that? Beautiful countryside flashes by the window, podcasts ring in your ears, and there’s nobody within ten miles who knows who you are, let alone wants you to do anything. It feels like thinking time, praying space, creativity fuel for the soul. Coming home is even better.
Now, it’s not London. I’m thankful for that. On those trains you have to squeeze into the city, and the countryside is not nearly so green. It’s smelly and hot and everyone is grumpy about the fact that they have to get off in the grimness of actual London. I understand that that commute, and especially if it were every day, is a bit less enjoyable. I wouldn’t much like it. But the Oxford trip is more spacious, and today it’s my lot.
I think I like the distance it creates between home and work too. Usually that difference is the opening of a laptop without leaving the house, a few padded steps from one room to another. On these travelling days though it’s a track, pylons, fields, hedgerows, Appleford, Culham, Radley, and the S3 bus past the Randolph, the Radcliffe Camera and the long leafy roads that traverse the city of dreaming spires. I’m almost a different me by the time I get there. And I’m okay with that. It feels old-fashioned, sort of right.
What awaits me at the office, I don’t want to think about. I have an odd feeling about today, as though it might be uniquely difficult.
The train’s pulling into Oxford now, where I usually find a nice bacon roll and a cup of tea before catching the bus.
Time to go.
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