Tuesday 3rd April

I was travelling back from Wales catching the 5.20 from Bridgend.  Don’t ask me what I was doing in Wales, too long  a story to retell here, suffice it to say that in the early evening I was on a train heading due East.  Contrary to my normal behaviour I hadn’t reserved a seat, and was slightly worried that I might have to stand.  A three hour train journey was daunting enough without having a guarantee of a seat.  Luckily I found one amongst the almost entirely reserved section, but it was facing the rear which I hate.  I do love to see where I am going; I also feel slightly travel sick travelling backwards, but a seat is a seat I reasoned and took it rather than scouring the whole train for a better one.  I had a music magazine and my trusty kindle, but neither really appealed to me.  I read for a while but was quite bored, besides the young man who took the seat next to me (I was fortunately by the window) had plugged in a laptop and was watching a BBC thriller on i-player ‘Inside Men’, which I had caught a bit of a few weeks ago.  He did have earphones so I wasn’t too distracted, but actually just seeing the flickering images without the sound was more annoying than if I could hear the words; how the deaf must be frustrated by trying to watch just moving pictures.  I was forced to half turn and stare out of the window and thank goodness I did.  The sun was hanging low in the sky, and just preparing to set. And facing West as the train hurtled East I was in the perfect position to watch as it made landfall and seemed to get larger and larger and a beautiful bright orange.  It started to dip below the tree-line, and then I had this wonderful optical illusion.  The sun being so far away stayed in exactly the same place, the furthest and now almost silhouetted trees, houses and occasional church steeple, slowly moved across its’ face, while in the middle distance trees and houses moved quite quickly and the bushes and small trees next to the train sped past in a blur.  So, all at once I was seeing four different images, the blur of foliage, the fast moving of middle distance, the slow stately sweep of the horizon, and fixed yet slowly sinking my old friend the sun.  I watched for a full hour until the sun had completely gone and the last vestiges of pink had faded to indigo too, and the night came on black and cold.  The best bit was when there was only a faint haze of pinky-orange in the sky and everything was in silhouette, with the orange globes of street lights skittering past.  Quite spectacular.