Well and truly grumpy

I have no problem with a heap of snow or an iced-up railway line. In fact, I’m very happy for both those things to cause a little disruption and for us all to be bounced out of our routines for the duration. But I’m just not sure whether, since this little reminder of the mighty elements, it’s my equilibrium that’s been lost or Southern’s.

Last night a broken-down train – not ours – kept us waiting somewhere on the threshold of Lewes. The night before, two drivers failed to show up on time, which meant hearing about their progress across London and along from Brighton while waiting at Victoria and Haywards Heath respectively. And the number of red signals! I don’t think I’ve ever met so many.

And – another sign of disequilibrium – this week half the carriages on the 7.42 are snug and warm while the other half are downright cold. Of course we old-hands are trained to seek out the warm spots, but what about those who simply get on the first carriage they see?

So I’ve decided to call a halt to this practice of clutching at every benefit of every doubt. And yesterday, when I’d been deposited in Lewes at last, the thought of making my way up the hill and to the top end of town (usually just a part of the landscape of the day) presented itself as just one more slight to be borne. I treated myself to a taxi instead. And sitting here now – with the drafts and the cold just one carriage away; on schedule but not knowing whether an errant driver is lying in wait round the very next corner; making progress but living in fear of the next red signal – not even crossing the Balcombe Viaduct is enough to lift my spirits. So now you know: I’m well and truly grumpy.

Where were they when I needed them?

The 7.42 has been a part of my life for a good few years, and so the same must be true of whichever train awaits me at platform 6 of London Bridge to take me from there to my final destination. Those trains come thick and fast, thank god, and there’s not much to tell them apart, so I feel as if I’m familiar with each of them from every angle (inside and out) and that I know their rhythms, their sighs, their rumbles, and their general bearing. And of course I know their colours, too.

So why, this morning, did I walk blindly, deafly and unthinkingly onto a blue train streaked with purple? Why was I one of the only ones among my platform companions to get on? And why did I sit relatively calmly while it wheezed its way along the tracks, pausing for breath every few moments? And why did I not notice that the buildings outside the window were just slightly unfamiliar?

It was our arrival at a station called, I think, City Thameslink that brought me, quite literally, to my senses and brought home to me the divergent path my life had taken. Put quite simply, I was in one place, and my life was in another. So I experienced the full force of a wake-up-call and a shock to the system, both of which were particularly unforgiving in the circumstances – this was one of the few days in the year when my presence was very much required earlier rather than later, and being absent wasn't an option.

Happily, I did make it to my destination on time (where something like 100 students – of the non riotous kind – were waiting for me), so I’ve regained both my composure and my life. But now I'm keeping a close eye on the trains and ­– even more so – on my senses. Where were they when I needed them?

I'm working on it

I’ve been away for a week, and it was a good week in almost every respect – but, gosh, it’s good to be back and treading the well-worn path of my daily life. Of course just over a week ago that’s exactly what I was desperate to escape, the well-worn path having become like a muddy rut and the various obligations of my day standing in the way like little stumbling blocks.

But perhaps this holiday was a little ambitious with nine nights spread over six different beds. There was the brief respite of one bed for four nights in Devon, courtesy of the in-laws, but the rest was all geographical non sequiturs and out-of-the-way stopovers (Cambridge for one reason, Suffolk for another).

So it was an unlikely holiday and itinerary in one sense, though it did take us to see the people we wanted to see. But now that I’m back, normal life seems like a particularly pleasurable and easy thing to lead, and even the to-ing and fro-ing to London seems like a gentle stroll. Better still, those ruts have turned back to well-honed pathways and those little stumbling blocks, seen in this new and better light, are nothing more than the warp and weave of normality. In short, I’m wallowing in predictability, familiarity and the finely tuned infrastructure of my very own life.

So the holiday has done its job and spewed me back into Lewes recharged, refreshed and content. The problem is, it’s less than four weeks to the next holiday, and I’m not sure I’ll be ready in time. But I’m working on it.

Amongst the French

To my mind, ‘genre’ is one of the hardest words to say in the English language. It has only five letters, but they’re an unfortunate combination. It’s the ‘nre’ that really trips me up. Actually, I struggle with any word that’s descended from the French. Put me in a cheese shop, and ask me to ask for Brie, and I’m stumped. What to do with the ‘r’? Give it a roll, or not?

The problem is not that I can’t cope with that French ‘r’, but that I can. I’ve got a French mother, and a history of ordering Brie in French cheese shops as well as English ones, so it’s not something that I can just ignore. By the time I’ve mentally juggled with the alternatives, all spontaneity is gone and the process has become something to be got through.

So it’s not English pronunciation that’s a problem, nor French, but the very fine cusp between them. My mixed allegiances aren’t usually a problem – after all, the English Channel is a clear of sign of what’s what – and usually when I’m out and about in the streets of Lewes I’m able to keep my French ‘r’s to myself. But then Brie or some other delicacy will rear its awkward, disorientating head and send me stumbling upon that awkward cusp and into this very particular quandary.

And it looks as if my (still small) son is headed the same way. On a recent trip to France, he happened to insert a very French ‘r’ into none other than the very English exclamation ‘crumbs’. And that was after only three days amongst the French.

A step too far

One of the best signs I’ve ever seen was one that told me that I was now entering the wilderness – as if this didn’t somehow negate the effect or the reality. We gathered our wits, braced ourselves, and stepped beyond the sign.

Of course Britain doesn’t even pretend to have such a thing as wilderness – this was in New Zealand – and I think the only other time I’ve experienced wilderness (this time for real and identifiable by the very fact that it was unlabelled) was in North America. And on this occasion, because I genuinely didn’t know where I was, civilisation suddenly became the one thing I truly cared about. I wanted evidence of it in any shape or form – a road, a hut, a telegraph pole; in fact, anything to show that humans had been here before.

I’m sure the likes of Scott and Cook would have got over the fear of being in uncharted territory pretty quickly, but then this was their business. For me (and I doubt I’m alone in this), there’s something comforting about being in the company of others, happily positioned somewhere in a long line of human beings – who happen to be far enough away that they neither get in the way nor obscure the view.

So I’m all for following in the footsteps of others, at least metaphorically. But labelling wilderness is surely going a step too far.

A system I can relate to

It seems unlikely that I’ll ever come to know my left and right. When I was a mere slip of a thing and still of impressionable age, my mother tried hard to drum some sort of awareness of these alien coordinates into me. She’d shout instructions – touch your right foot; your left leg; your right ear – and I would attempt to respond correctly: a sort of ‘Simon says’ scenario, then, without the complication of Simon.

But these exercises, while making me (and, most importantly, my mother) feel that I was working on the problem, did little to improve matters. And so I’ve gone through life with what feels to me like an innate inability to differentiate between the spaces to either side of me. It hasn’t been too much of a burden, and I’ve found ways of working round the problem. Most usefully, a quick look down at my hands (as long as it’s not too dark and I’m ungloved) reveals a scar which I’ve been told denotes my right. The scar was caused by an exploding Kenwood food mixer, and it’s since become an unexpectedly functional distinguishing feature.

So what’s my problem with left and right, apart from the fact that I can’t tell them apart? It’s their fickleness I don’t like. Turn your back on them for an instant, and they’ve swapped places. Bring an interlocutor into the equation, and heaven knows whose left and right you’re talking about. To me, the whole concept of left and right has always seemed just slightly flawed.

North, south, east and west, on the other hand, are delightful and far less indecisive guides. The mere mention of them is so much more romantic, and their territory so much more far-reaching. Bring out the compass, and all of a sudden you’re in the presence of an invisible but constant force that overrides any kind of twisting, turning, self-centred confusion. Now there’s a system I can relate to.

No sense at all

I woke this morning with a fierce desire to talk through the dream I’d just emerged from. Now, one of the things I like most about my husband is that he doesn’t feel the need to share his dreams. Or, rather he has always abided by my rule that we don’t, on any pretext, share dreams. So this morning I kept to the rules and said nothing.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t wish my own night-time ramblings on anybody, least of all the person I wake up next to. Other people’s dreams, even your partner’s, have little narrative interest. No beginnings, no middles, no ends – and therefore no point. And a narrative arc is surely something we look for in most things, with even the most mundane of days providing us with an arc of sorts: an unsteady beginning, the regular staging posts of breakfast, lunch and dinner, the gradual descent towards the night.

Besides, with my discovery of The West Wing a couple of years ago, I’ve come to realise that the perfect way to bring my own daily arc to a close is escaping into someone else’s well-wrought narrative (I’m a little late in coming to this, I know). But ever since I watched my way to the end of the series – five or so years late and drip-fed by DVD – I’ve been hankering for something to fill that post-dinner, post-chores slot. I’ve tried alternatives, but so far nothing has quite provided what I need (and I found The Wire almost impossible to follow).

So my own narrative arc is slightly lacking right now. Which makes it, I think, even more important that I don’t muddy that crucial (and already unsteady) start to the day by airing my dreams, however urgent they might seem. In the dead of the night, such delusions might hold my attention, but in the light of day they would, I’m sure, make no sense at all.

Something else entirely

There are some things which the mind should never get involved in. Driving is one. Passwords are another.

Ah, passwords. Those burdensome accessories of modern life. They rattle around in the brain, become entangled, and, with every leap in technical maturity, they multiply. And just when you think you’ve got them straight, you’re called upon to execute a change of tack or swap a digit, just to keep those hackers at bay and give a sheen of newness. Until recently, this tyranny of ‘systems’ had become one of the more stressful aspects of my professional life. It was enough to paralyse even the most efficient and well-trained mind.

But – and for me this was my hallelujah moment – the remembering of passwords should actually be the most basic, and most bodily, function: the latest in a long evolutionary thread of Pavlovian responses, the fingers reacting – without recourse to the brain – to a particular screen with exactly the right string of letters and digits. So, it’s not unlike opening your mouth when you have something to say (something which, inexplicably, I once forgot to do); or closing your eyes before you go to sleep. The key is entering those password situations calmly and unthinkingly, and leaving the eyes and fingers to do the work.

As for driving, the separation of mind and body is something, which, if you have any aptitude at all, you’ll grasp from the very start. But if you’ve never quite grown out of thinking deeply about which one’s the brake pedal and which the accelerator, it might be best to find other ways of getting around. Passwords are, for obvious reasons, your own business, but driving is something else entirely.

New heights of satisfaction

I’ve always been partial to a little minimalism. In fact, of all the ‘isms’, this is probably the one I feel most strongly about. And, despite being prey to the usual clutterings and accumulations that tend to accompany one through existence, I’m always on the look-out for ways to surround myself with less.

Packing to go away, then, is a particular pleasure and the perfect opportunity to condense my life down to just a bag or two. In my unencumbered youth (of not so long ago), I developed a habit of cycling alone round various countries – Denmark, Finland, Ireland – with hardly a square inch of bag space that hadn’t been premeditated and carefully allotted. And, whatever I took with me, I used – another satisfaction of this particular school of thought.

But I realised, even then, that a two-week cycling trip isn’t exactly an accurate reflection of the world, and I was generally happy to return to permanence, unpack my scant belongings and get back to normality and all the accoutrements that come with it. The pursuit of a minimalist existence continued, of course, but there were more support systems – and things – in place. Indeed, as a friend once said to me, it was perfectly possible to be minimalist if you had the support of those around you. And, as it happened, this particular friend was always delighted to offer any assistance (which meant back-up supplies and a good deal less minimalism on his part).

A few years down the line, and ‘things’ still aren’t really my thing. But anyone paying close attention will know I’ve recently been getting to grips with a very small machine, and I do believe that this particular acquisition is the closest I’ve come to achieving my aim. It’s in its element when impersonating other things: a telephone (of course), an alarm clock, a map, a torch, a compass... In short, it’s trying to usurp the places of all those many things I’ve been unable to separate myself from until now. It might just be time to get back on the bike and scale new heights of satisfaction.

Quite enough for me

I’d never really noticed agricultural machinery until I was in France this summer. And the reason for this change in perspective? The fact that I had an almost-four-year-old as my guide. But it’s one of those interesting phenomena in life that once something has been brought to your attention, it’ll confront you at every opportunity. So where previously my eye would have been drawn to the contours of the hillside or perhaps to a steeple rising above the trees, now it was drawn – inexorably, it seemed – to the small block of colour working its way slowly across the field.

It’s just the same with certain words. You live in ignorance of them for years, and then one day a new one pops up on your radar – and never quite leaves it. Take the word ‘atavistic’, for example. I’d managed very well without it until I was approaching early adulthood, and then one day I came across it, stopped and thought about it, looked it up (in a dictionary, as one used to do), and life has been just slightly different ever since. In fact, for a while after that first moment of discovery, that word seemed to follow me everywhere. It still pops up regularly in my line of sight.

And how had I never noticed that at a certain time of year those agricultural machines are everywhere, bound up as they are with the changing seasons and all that? I really don’t know, but, now that my eyes have been alerted, I’m taking a brand-new pleasure in how very simple and constant the commercial world of agricultural machinery seems to be. And, even better, it’s just the same whether you’re this side of the channel or that one, which means I came back from France to discover that my new-found knowledge was as applicable here as it was there. Here, too, the fields were full of those little blocks of colour, and here, too, red meant one manufacturer and green meant another.

Of course I might be wrong, and perhaps there’s a lot more to it than that – but that’s the thing, you see. Until you disillusion me, and until you introduce a whole new set of values into the equation, it’ll be as if those values don’t exist. And then once you (or the almost-four-year-old) have explained to me that, actually, agricultural machinery is as complex and subtle and nuanced and aesthetically influenced as any modern industry, I’ll wonder how I’d never noticed these things before. But, until then, those little blocks of colour will be quite enough for me.

I can't deny that I'm delighted

A little while ago, at this very spot, I aired my feelings about a certain typo. But I like to think that I’ve broadened my perspective since then and become altogether more accepting. After all, ‘human error’ wasn’t coined as a result of just one mistake-prone individual, and this little phrase has bestowed upon us all (thanks to our privileged position within it) a very welcome margin of error in which to operate. And combine this leeway with the academic nature of the written word, and you have a kind of metaphorical playground where there’s – usually – no harm done and little fear of serious reprisal.

Step beyond that sheet of paper or computer screen, and the consequences aren’t always quite so academic, of course. A muddling of the stations Bruxelles-Midi and Bruxelles-Central on my part (and that of my companions – I wasn’t entirely to blame) meant that we recently found ourselves alighting from one train and looking in vain for another. The spectre of a series of ghastly repercussions loomed, but, thankfully, we realised our mistake, executed a quick turn-around, hotfooted it back to the platform and soon made good the error of our ways. It was the real-life equivalent of the ‘undo’ button in action, and in no time at all we were on our way to London aboard the Eurostar. Phew. Even I have to admit to having experienced an adrenalin rush far more powerful than that which follows an inappropriate apostrophe put right.

But to return to that immaterial typo which set me upon this train of thought in the first place: it was a missing ‘a’, notable for its recurring absence on the scrolling announcements of the 7.42 out of Lewes. I had let my thoughts be known, moved on and began the process of acquiring that broader sense of perspective of which I’ve spoken. But one Tuesday morning my eye was snagged by the brand-new presence of that formerly errant letter – now reinstated. I’m not claiming credit for this development, and I’m aware that forces far more powerful (and far less academic) than my idle ramblings are at work in this world, but – whoever or whatever those forces are – I can’t deny that I’m delighted.

Such things don't always come naturally

I’ve just heard about someone – a twenty-year-old university student, actually – who didn’t know how to use a paperclip. And so it dawned on me not only that a paperclip might be a generational thing, but also that a paperclip actually ‘works’ in some way (or, if in the hands of the wrong generation, doesn’t).

And this alarming anecdote of twenty-first-century life – and accompanying minor epiphany – came to me soon after I’d been pondering the fact that these days, just when you need a paperclip, there’s none to be found. The recesses of any respectable desk drawer used to be teeming with the things, but now that I found myself reaching for one (I confess that my intentions were not entirely modern – I was posting a cheque), those recesses were empty. Had the paperclip’s obsolescence come too soon, before our need was gone but after we’d finished restocking, and all this time supplies had been running dangerously low? Whether or not this was a correct interpretation of the situation, it was obviously time to improvise (and to think about how if the paperclip hadn’t been invented it would be time to do so).

So paperclips should definitely exist, I feel, and it should be incumbent upon twenty-year-old university students to be versed in their workings. By the same token, I’ve been grappling with the complexities of an altogether newer contraption, and there’s been a great deal incumbent upon me since I took ownership of it. For the truly interesting thing about this new iPhone of mine is this: its workings are apparently intuitive, but I’m having to learn them. As I now know, such things don’t always come naturally.

Issues of mine

We don’t often have bananas in our house these days. They’re just too fickle a proposition: either too yellow and too firm, or too black and too soft. Obviously somewhere inbetween was the perfect moment, but it must have been when we were out. So there they’d lie (which might, I suppose, be the problem – I see sensible people hang them up these days) in our fruit bowl, until they become an insult – and, more importantly, a danger – to the fruit around them. Then they’d be discreetly transferred across to the tub of perishables destined for the compost. And then a few days later out they’d go, to continue their miserable life-cycle out of doors and out of sight and mind.

I struggle with other food, too, but nothing’s quite as tricky as a banana. And, in fact, nothing on the domestic front is quite as tricky as the kitchen. Washing seems to come naturally enough, and tidying and cleaning are just about doable – and can always wait – but the constant demands of the stomach on the one hand and food on the other still catch me out.

It’s been, I imagine, half a lifetime or so of grappling with the problem. But there are other things which have preoccupied me just as much and which, happily, have now been mastered. In the very best cases, it’s been but a slight adjustment: the toaster shifting sideways and suddenly finding its rightful resting place, the new kitchen roll holder performing its function admirably… Even after many years of life, then, I still have within my grasp the pleasure of bettering what’s gone before.

And thank god life contains enough complexity that there’ll always be room for such improvement, and unpredictable enough that our own expiry dates don’t announce themselves ahead of time. It all gives me hope that there’s still a good chance of a breakthrough in those other kitchen issues of mine.

Creature of habit

It might just be a harking back to schooldays – or even earlier – but, to all intents and purposes, I have two pairs of shoes: an outdoor pair and an indoor pair. But today, a special day for reasons I won’t go into, I remembered another pair of shoes. I dusted them down and put them on.

And immediately I began to wonder what it must be like to have different shoes for different days, to be one of those women who love shoes for themselves (the shoeness of them, I mean) rather than as functional things. How their feet must struggle with the relentless unfamiliarity which regularly assaults them.

But my thinking was interrupted – driven off course even – by the need to attend to where this couple of impostors were taking me and by my attempts to educate them in my ways and routines. Until it dawned on me: this was perhaps the point. With every strange pair of shoes comes easy reinvention and a chance to refresh the so-called daily grind.

Perhaps I should don this alien pair on a more regular basis, I thought to myself, clutching at the idea of a carefree, unpredictable me. Damn. That would defeat my purpose. It seems I’ll always be a creature of habit.

Not a bank holiday in sight

The opening and closing of banks rarely impinges on my line of sight these days, but I do like bank holidays – those rare Mondays that are happily out of step with the passing of time and thereby unite us in a communal, civic kind of a way. Oh, except of course for our parking wardens, who go about wrongfooting anyone who assumes Sunday rules still apply. Humph.

But, parking wardens and their awkward rules apart, for those of us who struggle to find even a chink of time between the opposing tugs of flighty weekends and demanding weeks, here – at last – is a day that is mercifully free of the usual strains and agendas. And what greater satisfaction on a day such as this than to forgo ambition and any remotely long-lasting achievement, and turn instead to righting the creeping imbalance that is waiting to topple us right here at home.

Which means, of course, a trip to Ham Lane with a car full of cardboard followed by a trip to Waitrose to restock. Just briefly everything is right with the world. It’s catharsis and satiation all at once. And it’s both domestic duty and civic duty fulfilled. Before the spread starts again with not a bank holiday in sight.

There could be more

I may be wedded to the 7.42 in more ways than one, but there’s always the possibility that I might reassert my independence by deciding – on a whim – on a later train. And so it was this morning that I changed my rhythms, eschewed the 7.42 and boarded the 7.55. And how enlightening this proved to be. Between getting up and out of the door – usually a highly calibrated sliver or time – I mused on the minutes at my disposal, and how different life could be. It was a useful reminder that the path I take through my days is just one of many possibilities.

And perhaps my delinquent morning was a good way of clawing back a little control and evading the hold that Southern has over us all. For with every tweak of a number – probably decided on, like so much these days, by the flick of an algorithm – Southern reaffirms its presence, and we find ourselves shifting our rhythms to its own. But I’ve been lucky with the 7.42. So far it’s been steadfast enough, and we’ve suited each other well.

Now, though, my capricious morning has given me a taste for freedom, and perhaps, I realise, the odd departure from my usual comings and goings – my usual themes, my usual parameters – is no bad thing. There could be more.

Boundaries are breached

I’ve always been happy to admit that I’m suited to office life. And the train out of Lewes first thing in the morning is not dissimilar. We’re all in it together, but actually we’d like nothing more than to be left alone. Sure, we can nod and greet and exchange a few undemanding words if we happen to be behind one another in the Runaway queue. But once the train pulls in, the barricades of our respective minds are up and standing firm.

Our silence is neither unfriendly nor disrespectful, then, but just an acknowledgement of a camaraderie that doesn’t need to be oiled by talk of any kind. And perhaps this is a reason why I’ve adapted to the early-morning commute as easily as I did to a desk-bound existence. It’s the same gentle sociability with quietness positively encouraged.

But occasionally I’ve found a clique forming around me on the station platform, through nothing more calculated than the fact that each of us has made a habit of sitting in a particular carriage on a particular train. And this is fine by me, but if the companionship this engenders has the audacity to turn to banter, then I’m off to relocate to another, more appealing carriage. Until that one, too, has ideas above its station and boundaries are breached.

Real life

A car, these days, seems to be an endlessly adjustable thing: all buttons, and knobs and levers. But once you’re done with tweaking, life is sorted.

With a train seat, though, you’re never quite sorted. Firstly, there’s not nearly enough scope for adjustment, and, secondly, there are just too many unknowns, too many outside influences – in short, too much real life – for any kind of comfortable plateau ever to be reached. It’s a life of compromise in which the luxury of your own seat is just a euphemism for a temporary and unstable resting place.

Which is, I suppose, why so many of us like the car so very much. But even with a car there’s the possibility that you might be sharing the driver’s seat with a companion of different dimensions. And then what happens to those carefully orchestrated settings? It’ll be endless tussles with the mirror and jolting of the seat – those outward clues of a life lived in the endless sway of give and take.

Unless, of course, you choose to partner up with someone whose measurements match yours almost exactly. This is just what I did – a canny move, I’d say, and one which means we can each slip in and out of the driver’s seat (and in and out of each other’s shoes) with no thought for who was there last. It’s an existence of ease and simplicity on the one hand, but – on the other – perhaps not one that’s prepared me particularly well for that one-size-fits-all, rough-and-ready template of real life.

Could someone fix it?

A rockfall on the line between London and Lewes isn’t your usual reason for arriving home late, but that was last week’s explanation, and that’s the great thing about modern passenger directives – they really do provide the realism with which to imbue your excuses. So information, even too much of it, is a handy thing when things go wrong.

When things go right, though, the less said the better. The commentary accompanying our progress could be worse – at least it’s only an audio, not an audio-visual, hell – but just imagine that little piece of silence which might exist, for example, if Cooksbridge and Plumpton were left to shoulder responsibility for their own shortcomings.

At least with a human at the microphone, we get inflection, variation and a filter of sorts: a godsend when the senses have been dulled and deadened by over-familiarity. So, the other week when the conductor chose to preface his remarks with ‘I know I tell you this every day but…’ I sensed, at last, an acknowledgement that we’ve been in this situation before. I’m grateful for that.

As for the scrolling equivalents of those verbal communications, they brook no human intervention, no bending to circumstance. And, worst of all, no correction. For months now, we on the 7.42 have been subjected to a typo that snags my eye at regular intervals – a hellish loop that seems beyond the sphere of human influence. If anyone from Southern is reading this, please, please could someone fix it?

But a small thing to overcome

‘Swoop’ is a funny word if you think about it, and not one that’s often applied to us humans, but today it suits my purposes perfectly. I'm thinking of my early-morning progress from the upper regions of Lewes to its nether ones, and of the fact that once I’m on my way, powered simply by one cup of tea and the need to get going, it’s a veritable plunge, with little to stand in my way apart from the odd kink in the road and the usual considerations of self-preservation.

Lewes’s very particular geology is most definitely on the side of its migrant workers first thing in the morning. Gravity – not something I’ve often thought about since getting to grips with what exactly it was – is just the kind of incentive I need to get me up, out, and down to the station. And others seem to benefit from this same propulsion, so that by the time I’m crossing the bridge over the tracks I’m one amongst many, all of us coming to the end of our own personal swoops and readying ourselves to take our positions along the platform.

The other end of the day is a little harder to explain – a kind of lunge towards home, with the energy to get up the hill born of a homing instinct and no doubt a kind of natural phenomenon which assures almost all species a bed for the night. It’s a final sprint in the face of adversity – or survival of the fittest in action – and a reminder of the toughness of the commuter’s life. But by this point in the day we’ve got our coping strategies in place, and gradient is but a small thing to overcome.

Weariness descends

I’ve never – ever – used a toilet on a Southern train. It’s just not something I’d think of doing. Which reminds me: I once did a full-time job, albeit a very temporary one, where for the whole two weeks I was there I never once used the facilities. It was, I think, firstly a fear of being caught away from my post and away from the telephone (because this was the 1980s and landlocked telephones were in frequent use then), but also the fact that, when on duty, I just wasn’t in a frame of mind where it would even cross my mind to need to go. An obvious case of mind over matter, then, but an interesting one. And one that brings me forward to 2010 and to my time on the rails.

It’s not that I don’t make myself very much at home once on board, but there are certain things I don’t do. I don’t take off my shoes, I don’t sleep, I don’t apply lotions or potions, and I don’t nip to the loo. I’m strictly on duty, and I intend to stay that way.

I know of course that not everyone observes quite the same delineations between human states of mind (and body), and a quick look around the average carriage will reveal all sorts of unbuttoned behaviour that smacks of a blurring of the boundaries. That’s fine of course – though I’m as fussy as the next commuter when it comes to what impinges on my lines of sight or any other sense – but there’s a pleasure in keeping buttoned up, and it makes arrival at home all the sweeter. I step in the door and immediately my shoes feel a little too tight, my bladder needs emptying, weariness descends.

Hove instead

To the casual observer, Eastbourne and Littlehampton probably have a great deal in common, and I’m sure they’re both as lovely as each other. But hear the word ‘Littlehampton’ instead of ‘Eastbourne’ when you’re on your way to Lewes, and the feeling is not unlike what I imagine the fear of god to be. There can’t be many amalgamations of sounds that can so regularly project such contrasting realities or necessitate such immediate remedial action.

If ever there was an excuse for talking of parallel universes, then, I think I’ve found it right here in Sussex, with its vortex right there in Haywards Heath, where your hitherto reliable collection of carriages may suddenly split. However many times you’ve passed this way before, here’s a manoeuvre that can still trip you up. And if the idea is to thoroughly confuse, worry and upset the Gatwick contingent (even if not personally affected) or my parents-in-law, then this is the way to do it. For the latter, it created a kind of nail-in-the-coffin effect on their will to travel this way, coming as it always did after the hurdle of getting from one Victoria station (for the coach) to another (for the train). Never again would they submit themselves to such uncertainty.

But I can see that splitting trains is, from a business point of view, eminently sensible, and at least there’s something about this old-fashioned form of transport that is perfectly adaptable to the economic imperative. As for the parents-in-law, they still come to visit us (they are, in case you were wondering, thoroughly good sorts and welcome any time), but they now wend their way cross-country, approach pitfall-free from the west, and arrive, very sensibly, at Hove instead.

Lewes-to-London folk

A trip to far-flung Aberfeldy and the hills beyond by train – with just a smattering of hire car for the very furthest leg – is a hell of a lot of train to contend with, and a very different animal to my usual straight up and down from Lewes to London and back. In all, we were hosted by six different train companies (our fault, admittedly, for deciding to go via Shrewsbury), and the preceding months were punctuated by six different lines of enquiry, each of which – happily – ended in the acquisition of the very cheapest of tickets.

And this was just the preparatory stage. The grappling continued, with its object no longer the vagaries of pricing systems but now the awkwardness of overstuffed luggage racks, (good-natured) confrontation with fellow passengers over seat reservations, and the unnatural stretching of attention spans. How I envied my commuter-self its simple, uncontentious progress from drawing board to destination.

But I’ve come back to our native railway with a newfound appreciation of the diversity of rail travel. I’ve gained perspective and context, those twin delights of the well-travelled mind, and I now see Southern for what it really is: nothing more than an accident of politics, locality and timing – an accident which has cut it off from its counterparts in other parts of the country, lent it its greenish hue and, most importantly, made it the supposed mainstay of us Lewes-to-London folk.

Pass muster

Tomorrow I’m off to Scotland by train. There’s little to liken such a journey to my usual ups and downs from Lewes to London and back. But of course for the Lewes to London leg of this self-indulgent (as opposed to work-related) journey, I don’t need a ticket, and this fact is a source of unlikely, unexpected pleasure. My season ticket – such a sensible, necessary purchase – covers the cost as if it’s doing me a favour. And it makes me feel so much better value than my non-season-ticket-holding husband.

But there are other satisfactions to be gained from being the holder of such a thing. My particular trajectory through the ins and outs of railway property means that most of the time it sits idle in my bag, but if a conductor comes along it’s good – even gratifying – to be ready and waiting to be proved innocent

I wonder, then, if as a law-abiding citizen (the default setting for most of us, I presume) it’s one of the few occasions in fully fledged adult life when our obedience gets a chance to rear its bowed head. We get to prove we’re doing the right thing; and for once we’re not just quietly not causing trouble.

Passport control is, perhaps, an even better moment for us obedient types. There they look you up and down properly – a reminder that my season ticket photo is, I feel, worth rather more attention than it’s getting. And what about those two perfectly matched numbers on the two complementary parts of my ticket? Shouldn’t they be congratulated for their correctness on a more regular basis?

Still, at a time of life when the reward-fuelled experience of childhood is unlikely to come our way again, these meetings with conductors are junctures to be grasped. The approaching footfall and thank-you-thank-you rustle of the conductor as he passes down the train is our chance – one of our very few – to pass muster.

Two's grace

Most days, my commuting moments pile up one upon the other, each moment coming to rest neatly upon its predecessor – which is just how it should be. I’m not looking for excitement or stimulation in this part of my life.

But yesterday my moments broke the mould. I was coming to London Bridge from a – for me – unusual direction. And it dawned on me that there was no way I was going to catch my train. My comfort zone these days has expanded to the point where I can cut it fine and enjoy the challenge, but this was knife-edge fine, and I was in another zone completely. And so I relaxed: far better to miss the train by five solid minutes than actually see it pulling out.

But then – just when I didn’t require it – the must-catch-that-train instinct clicked in. And back came the adrenaline rush. I legged it through the convolutions of the London Bridge tube/train interchange, seamlessly inserted my season ticket into the slot and out again, got my body through the barrier and arrived at the train doors... And, yes, I did get on that train, slithering through the closing doors in a way that I wouldn’t repeat, wouldn’t recommend and haven’t relived – until now.

I basked in the glow of having made it. But it wasn’t just the pleasure of having caught the train that did it for me, but also the pleasure of not having to live through the dark despair of being left on the platform. There would have been a despondent, frustrated me to contend with – and thoughts of just how good life would have been if only I’d been on that train (as indeed it was for the real me already on its way to Lewes), of how all life’s problems would have melted away (as indeed they had, for now at least). And no doubt I would have cursed the punctuality of the service. Oh for a train that you could rely on to give you the courtesy of a minute or two’s grace.

Antimacassar notwithstanding

First class. Now what’s that all about? So, you get an antimacassar, that oblong piece of cloth on which to rest your head, but whether this is to protect the seat or your head, I’m not sure. And perhaps you’re just a little more likely to wind up next to someone more genteel than your (already fairly genteel) average commuter.

Far more interesting, though, are the gradations in the hierarchy of seating in standard class. To the casual traveller, this is of no concern, but I’m in it for the long haul, and so I’ve come to know every nuance of every kind of seat – a useable table; an armrest or not; full as opposed to obstructed view; a modicum, or less, of back support; aisle width (and its knock-on effects); and of course leg-room. All of which have alerted me to sensitivities I never knew I had.

But then there’s the human element to consider, and, sadly, it’s impossible to contain an environment that is assaulted – and then mutates – with every stop. But just sometimes I get it absolutely right: my neighbours are as discreet (and as discrete) in their management of personal space as I am; my back is perfectly aligned with my seat; my surroundings remain as peaceful at East Croydon as they were in Lewes. Then I wonder whether this is perhaps what first class is all about, lack of antimacassar notwithstanding.

The likes of me

So, as I was saying last week, there’s something about looking into other people’s lives from the shelter of the train that makes it neither intrusive nor untoward. You’re on the ultimate back road, cutting a swathe through homes, gardens and factories, but you didn’t ask to come this way. You just happen to be passing by, and, in any case, you’re almost invisible behind those slightly tinted windows.

And, as it happens, all those gardens streaking by give me the glimpses I need – a fix, in other words – of something I’d rather like for myself: a bigger garden. A small, boxy thing is the price we seem to pay in Lewes for surrounding ourselves by all those expansive, chalky hills, and so I’m in the fortunate position of having found something to aspire to each time I slice through Wivelsfield, Haywards Heath or even Clapham.

In short, all this is nothing like staring into someone’s front room. It’s mostly about marvelling at those gardens and the things people fill them with, enjoying the unsanctioned view of the back of a house rather than its more proper front, and sampling the messy edges of a hundred workshops and factories. So it’s spying for the fainthearted and the likes of me.

Vantage point

By now, four commuting years down the line, I know most of the nooks, crannies and railway escarpments between here and London. But occasionally I’ll look up and see something I’ve never seen before. How very heartening to realise that I don’t spend all my time looking out of the window and, equally, that I haven’t yet exhausted the visual possibilities of my commute.

But sometimes I see a house – or a piece of a house – so new, and so gleaming, that I realise it’s not just new to me, but truly new. One minute there’s a tight little space nestling between a factory and the railway line, and the next minute the builders have moved in. And then when I next happen to look up at that particular spot, on that particular side of the train, the foundations have been laid and the bricklaying has begun. And then, suddenly, there it is – a whole new house.

It’s good when signs of life start appearing: blurry bottles up close to the bathroom window, bits and bobs spilling out of the back door, a trampoline in the garden. But this is a subject for a different day: the low-grade, undercover observation of a world that has its back to you and for which the train provides the perfect vantage point…

Some might say

There’s nothing quite like being the proud owner of a well-rehearsed journey to make travel at other times and to other places seem slow and cumbersome. Let me explain. I know at exactly which minute past the hour I need to leave my house in order to execute a carefully choreographed arrival at the station (through the gates with season ticket at the ready, into the Runaway and out again with cup of tea) before slipping in through the train doors. But give me the task of getting to London at a more godly hour on a weekend, and I’ll feel the need to allow a good fifteen minutes to spare (and use some of that dithering about which route to take to the station).

To subvert an analogy, if I may: in my commuting persona, I’m a fish in water. I’m humanity at its slickest. And I expect humanity around me to aim for, and reach, those same high levels of efficiency. Novice travellers – or even worse, tourists – are quite simply undesirable.

So I admit that in my own small, inconsequential way – and in a controlled environment where I can cause no harm – I may have exhibited something approaching an arrogance you wouldn’t expect from me. But put me back in my natural, non-commuting habitat and I’m the kind of human you’d much rather know – unfocused, ungainly, and as much of a novice as the next person. Like a fish out of water, some might say.

Definitely forgiven

I like to think that the air in Lewes is in a different league to that of London. Admittedly, at the point of comparison my judgement has no doubt been tainted by prolonged and close proximity to my fellow passengers, and London is nothing more than a distant memory, but – still – there’s something cleansing about taking that first breath as I hit solid ground. Never mind that I’m alighting at a busy station, negotiating the four-wheel drives in what must be one of the largest car parks in town, and that I’m about to stand my ground on the unforgiving pavements of Station Street – I insist on giving Lewes the benefit of the doubt.

For what air hasn’t been improved by its backdrop? With the first sights of Lewes before me (Harvey’s Depot still proudly supporting its name if not its purpose, the elegant yet unshowy backs of Friars Walk, the chalk cliffs bringing to mind the sea), the whole thing is bound to feel good.

And this is a good time of year to be reflecting on such things. I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t been glad to see the back of GMT and the arrival of ‘plus one’, but there can’t be many better placed advocates than we Lewes commuters. At a stroke, the charms of Lewes become even more acute.

So the pleasure is all ours as we alight from the train. And who wouldn’t rather step down from the train and into a crevice of the Downs than into Croydon? The earlier starts, the longer journeys, the later finishes than our suburban counterparts – there are so many things that at times seem to sit so heavily on our shoulders. But, right now, with a couple of lungfuls of our native oxygen inside me, all is most definitely forgiven.

Cushy number

There’s something about the word ‘commute’ that induces immediate feelings of pity in the listener. In fact, hardly will I have uttered the words ‘Lewes’ and ‘London’ in the same sentence than my companion will be imagining me crushed up against a thousand others and demanding to know my vital door-to-door statistics. I’m pleased to say that my one-hour-and-forty-minute average is just enough to elicit a respectable dose of sympathy.

But let me stand up, at this point, for Southern. For it’s rare that I’m left standing. And, unseemly as it may be, I’m often in possession of a double seat right up until the hordes come on board at Haywards Heath, allowing me all the elbow room I need to eat my toast and drink my tea in peace.

As a way of spending an hour or so first thing, then, surely this isn’t quite so pitiable after all. I have a comfortable seat, more leg room than if I were flying economy (a good comparison to keep in mind), and, if my fellow commuters have any sense of decency, silence. Compare that to getting a small boy fed, watered, dressed and out the door – the task that falls to my non-commuting husband – and those over-eager sympathisers might begin to see why I’m the one with the cushy number.