Train ride at dawn
One summer’s morning at 6.30 am, I boarded the first train
of the day out of Scarborough station for York. A crisp, sunny morning but rather cold for
August and the whole world seemed to yawning and stretching. As we pulled out of the station, some of my
fellow passengers grumbled sleepily at each other, and rabbits foraging on the
line hopped crossly off the tracks at the last minute, seeming to curse the
train as they did so. Everything seemed to bursting with promises for the
future.
Pre-breakfast walk
in the snow.
A bitterly cold January morning in the mid-eighties. Snow on the ground, traffic sliding on icy
roads and pedestrians wearing so many clothes you just saw their eyeballs and
noses. My employers had sent me on a
residential management-training course at Theobalds Park, a training centre set
in parkland on the edge of London. With
the roads iced-up, and the course running into the evening, it was difficult to
get away for a break, and by the second day I was going stir-crazy. Not
normally an early-riser (four alarm clocks to get me up), I got
up an hour early, and at the first hesitant peek of a winter dawn, put on all the
jumpers I’d brought with me plus coat
and boots, and crunched out into a winter dawn for some fresh air.
It was more like frozen air; there were several inches of snow on the ground, my breath
steamed in front of me, and though I could hear the sound of cars on icy roads
a short way off, they weren’t visible through parkland. Where I walked was silent white wonderland as
I padded footprints through white sheets of snow.
After a few minutes, I almost bumped into a
rabbit, which blended in nicely in his
white winter fur – he obviously hadn’t expected a human and bolted despite my
attempt to explain that I wasn’t a threat.
For about half an hour it was like having a little pristine world all to
myself; I barely noticed the cold. Then I went back inside to breakfast and found my classmates had eaten all the bacon.
