I board the train from platform 5 at 7pm, with about fifty other passengers who were waiting with me. It's a squat, square train made up of three brown carriages that used to be grey and yellow. The night outside the platform is as dark as they come.
Most of the people on the train are pissed. A group of lads in their mid twenties stand in the middle of the carriage beside the door. They're wearing tiny sombreros held on their heads with that uncomfortable elasticated string, and they have Mexican moustaches stuck above their top lips.
'Lee!'
'Who's Lee? Only habla español!'
Not Lee turns to no one in particular: 'I like my women like I like my snooker tables - green in the face, legs apart, holes gaping, and balls dragged all over them!'
The train sets off and they begin a series of football chants.
1. 'Steve Gerrard, Gerrard, he kisses the badge on his chest, then puts through a transfer request, Steve Gerrard, Gerrard!' - To the tune of 'Que Sera, Sera'.
2. 'Every single one of us will stand by David Moyes, we'll stand by David Moyes, we'll stand by David Moyes, we'll stand by David Moooyyyes!' - Rinse repeat 3 times.
3. 'Park, Park, wherever you may be, you eat dogs in your home country! It could be worse, you could be Scouse, eating rats in your council house!'
The final chant leads onto, 'Feed the Scousers, let them know it's Christmas time!' and this leads on to a series of Christmas songs.
'Oi! It's Mouldsworth! You get off mate!' One of the lads shouts, pushing Not Lee off onto the platform. 'Alright, see you later boys!' he shouts, then re-boards the train.
Through the reflection of the window to my left I can see a girl's face, eyes closed, head back. She looks as though she's asleep, although I don't know how she's managed it.
A couple of other passengers have got their headphones in. One of them has a rucksack and a sleeping bag on the chair beside him, like myself.
'What you fuckers having? Guacamole?!' Another passenger shouts at the lads.
'Ohh we're Delamere!'
The train pulls in. The platform is barely distinguishable in the dark; just the white fencing is visible, marking the edge of the platform from the trees beyond it.
'Get out you bloody Mexicans!'
The doors shut, Mexicans still inside, and the train pulls off again.
The train passes above a town. Orange lights distinguish a park: swings, slide, climbing frame, cement. A house's interior lights, whiter in tone, determine the shape of a conservatory with a sofa and television. House fronts are lit up orange; a distant cinema in blue; orange street lamps; yellow windows; and all outside is orange, orange lights dotted everywhere below.
'Any paki shops on the way to Tomby Hill?'
'You think that's okay to say you bloody racist?'
All in jest.
The train arrives at Northwich and everyone gets off the train except the girl, still asleep.
I quickly check with one of the newly boarded if the train is for Manchester: it is. Travelling by rail I have a constant (and not unfounded) anxiety that I've boarded the wrong train.
Now the racket of lads have left the carriage the train's clanging and creaks and squeaks become worryingly clear.
'Approaching -' The voice on the tannoy is impossible to make out. The train is a relic.
Pulling into different stations different details are illuminated. Here it is the metal bars of the bridge over the tracks, painted white, abstracted from the black night.
Pulling out, a huge country pub is lit up in soft warm yellow, its hedgerow detailed in little Christmas lights.
We pass a motorway at a steep X intersection. I'm facing rearwards, and to my left the white car headlights are moving at the same pace as the train. For a second they appear almost to be entirely still, as the landscape rushes away behind us. Then, crossing the bridge over the motorway, the red tail lights of the cars driving in the opposite direction speed away from me in double time.
I see a few fireworks going off, bursts of 'oh!' and 'ahhh!' in the distance.
Pulling into Ashley there's a top-lit covered seating area with stone floors, a blue bench, and, in the left-hand corner, a payphone with no receiver. It slides behind the shelter wall as the train pulls away.
'Next stop Hale' is barely audible.
Coming into Hale the train passes through a level crossing. The road it crosses seems to be relatively central. The station is much grander than most of the little rural specks we've passed. We're approaching Manchester.
There's something unique about the different points of view train windows offer you at night, when they bounce the bright interior of the train back into your eyes. You can look at someone, then behind the windows there is a burst of light, and in a second you are looking through them.
The lights pass above: two round red bulbs caged onto the side of a station; beams of light from street lamps, orange and yellow and white; strips of light disperse flat against the wet pavement; green LED line a factory building; squares of domestic yellow in windows; Christmas lights in multicolour.
Lights can take on a symbolic quality. Two red lights moving away from you: car from the rear. Two static red lights, flashing: slow, stop, caution. At one point we pass a signal control tower. The control panel is lit up in an alphabet of its own, a language of flashes and different colours. It is carefully translated to each of the trains that pass through the station.
Each point of light multiplies on the surface of the window, repeating the reflections of the window behind, doubling on each of the window's glazings, refracting in the drops of water that scatter the pane of glass. But, mostly, it is pitch black.
We pull into Stockport, 'The Home of Stockport College'.
From behind:
'What a dickhead! Alright lad.'
'You going Warehouse Project?'
The train passes way above the cityscape. Looking down, stacks of square office windows are lit up, one on top of the other. 'Plaza' is written in huge neon red letters with a green border at the top of a building, strips all the way up and down in art deco style.
A building obscures the view for a second and then somehow we seem to be level with the buildings again.
The angle we see the city from changes how we interpret it. From above it is abstract and holistic, a collection of lights and buildings arranged in observable patterns. Travelling level with it we see it as real and tangible, and yet fragmentary and transitory.
Manchester Piccadilly approaches the train. Entering the station the night disperses. Everything is lit as bright as the interior of the train, bright lamps hanging above every platform.
Nearly two hours to get to Manchester.
The train doors open.
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