I used to live on a railway line, granted it was 400m from the ocean, but it really didn’t mean much when the early morning train came crashing through my bedroom window at 4.30 in the morning.
This morning I was on the train, this time travelling from Somerset west to Cape Town. I moved from the railway line 3 months ago, moved away from the sea to an apple farm, so this morning i woke up at 5, made a cup of tea and sat outside with the dogs for a bit and breathed in that magnificent morning air, the sky was pink, and the moon was full.
It was an odd moment for me, the idea of hopping on a train.You see i hadn’t done it for a very long time, but the northern express has just been launched, and i was at the end of my tether driving into work everyday on the N2, it was taking me more or less 2 hours. you can imagine my mood by the time i stumbled into the office! I arrived at somerset west station at 6.15, parked my car at the dedicated parking bays for us fancy travellers, and boarded the train at 6.30.
What an incredible experience, it took an hour – a restful hour – i read my book, and was offered copious amounts of coffee. There were no taxi’s, no buses, no accidents, no hooting – and more importantly i was not a grumpy cow by the time i sailed in at 7.30. My only issue is that i have a terrible habit of staring at people, and there was a man sitting opposite me reading Die Burger, he had the longest nose hairs i have ever seen, the sun was filtering in through the window and the light was catching the ends of them, illuminating them perfectly – i didn’t get to read much!
