London to Stansted - Missed

6am and half way to Stansted. The train’s rocking a fair bit—can’t hold my pen straight.

The scenery is relatively uninteresting. Mostly buildings.

We pass a lake. Its surface shimmers gunmetal from the sky, overcast twilight.

Then buildings again—ugly blue warehouses copied and pasted one after another, lorries lined up in docking stations.

A go-kart racing track breaks up the industrial buildings.

The greenery is marshy, swamp-like. Foliage, trees, and rivers stretch out. Concrete cylinders for water treatment are plonked into the middle of the picture.

Suddenly the greenery formalizes into distinct fields, cut geometrically with lines of young green crops running through them.

Then the fields deformalise, reducing to tufted grassy patches in planes that are shaped by the curves of the streams that run between them.

We are now approaching—Harlowe Town

We pass a big vegetable garden. The shed for it is an old shipping container with graffiti all over it.

This is—Harlowe Town

This train is for—Stansted airport

The next stop will be—Bishop Stafford

A single bench sits on its own in an overgrown field. No path to it. 

To the left is a wall of foliage like impenetrable mangrove. 

The views from both the left and the right open out and light floods the carriage. Flat fields extend either way and half of the view is sky.

A train flickers past to the left.

We are now approaching—Bishop Stafford

Please remember to take all of your belongings when leaving the train

Good advice.

On the platform at Bishop Stafford station a café service window is laid into the wall. Chocolate bars are lined up, lit up under the counter. A salesgirl leans over  them, peaking her head out a little to glance at the passengers who have just disembarked. She’s lit from above and below, outlined in soft light like a Hollywood star from the thirties.

The next stop will be—Stansted airport

Square concrete pillars support an overpass that runs across and above the track 50 meters ahead of the train. On the left, three of the pillars have been individually graffitied with different letters: M—A—N. 

When the train is 20 meters from the overpass the letters contract: MAN. 

After passing below the overpass I look back to see the letters stretching apart in reverse: N—A—M.

We enter a black tunnel.

We are now approaching Stansted airport, where this train terminates.

*****

Missed the flight.

The journey on the way back is brighter. My mood is darker.

We pass the same things in reverse order.

N—A—M

NAM

MAN

M—A—N

My watch is slow. This is not why I missed my flight.

Woods.

Fields.

Swampland.

Stations.

A train passes.

I see a plane drifting into the clouds.

I sit on the train.

Back into London.

Then to Gatwick.