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…
