looking out of the window

I am not an "aisle seat" kind of girl.
Never have been.
On trains, or boats or planes...
I can get to the lavatory.  It isn't hard. I can get up and walk over. someone
" Excuse me...so sorry...Thank you so much...oh! are those your ear plugs I just stepped on?".....
I can bend my knees and point my toes for exercise.
But if you are sitting on the aisle so you can move in an emergency.....and we all know that the safety demonstrations are just a whole load of tosh and we had better have a good relationship with whatever God makes sense to you......... then al I can say is good luck.

I choose to always sit by the window and leave potential disaster to those who don't know the power that singing can bring to the soul.

A side note. I am famous at my dentist's office for singing. My mouth might be opened wide and the drill may be taking out a stubborn filling, but I will find a Musical number to sing wordlessly along to. My favorite is " My Boy Bill" from ' Carousel.' That, or a chant by Yogananda. The only way to harmoniously distract yourself from nerve pain, airplane turbulence or MRI's.

But it is of trains I speak.The East Coast Line. The West Coast Line. The Southern. The Great Western. I sit by the window and I stare at the clouds and the horses. The churches and the sheep.
And I know I have written about this before...
But it sticks with me.

I am not driving past the front of people's houses, where their cars are parked and their dustbins sit and their net curtains twitch.
I am in their back gardens where they are trying to grow vegetables and  they have their knickers and sheets pegged out on their washing lines.
I see the brand new garden furniture waiting for a lovely day to have tea outside.
I see the parent banished to the back garden to have a puff on their fags.
Bicycles lying on their side. Half finished potting sheds.
I see barges inching up the river.  Pints of beer being drunk outside the pub.
I see the farmhouses, isolated. The Churches, remote. I see allotments and village greens. Light houses and caravans broken down on the side of the roads.

I whip past.
But I want to stop.

And I think the wanting to stop is a good thing.

Hallo Sheep. I say.
Hallo Horse, I bet there is a saddle in your future, I say.
Hallo cows.










I can't see a hay bale without being tossed back into the Hardy world of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

I can't see a light house without being in those two endings of the " French Lieutenant's Woman."
( There may not have been a light house, but there was a lot of sea spray.)

So these are views from my train windows on my train to up to Scotland and back.
Better than any kind of Disneyland for me.