I’ve made this journey, travelled on this train, from Manchester to Edinburgh, many, many times before. It must be the route I’ve travelled more than any other in the world. This is what I’m thinking about as I settle into my seat and prepare to witness the slow and familiar transfiguration of the world outside the window.
Soon the red bricks of Manchester will give way to the wide, flat coastline of Lancashire, and then the rolling green valleys of Cumbria; the oaks and chestnuts and beeches that line the tracks here in England will slowly become outnumbered by ever more evergreens as we move into Scotland; and after we pass through Haymarket and finally roll into Waverly, the black igneous cliffs of Castle Rock will suddenly rise up to our right, bearing the yellow-stone Castle itself proudly aloft.
I know the journey and its landscapes well.
I decide to try and figure out how well, to actually put a number on it. I mark out a tally count of the months that I lived in Edinburgh, and try to recall the frequency with which I used to travel south. At a conservative estimate I’m sure I’ve made this rail journey at least a hundred times. A more realistic figure is almost twice that.
Today, making this trip again, after a two-year hiatus which saw the world turned upside down, the journey feels strange: both intensely familiar and unsettlingly unfamiliar at the same time.
I think, as I have on this train before, of a poem by Norman MacCaig. It hits differently today.
I’m waiting for the moment
when the train crosses the Border
and home creeps closer
at seventy miles an hour.
I admire MacCaig’s ability to notice the Border; I usually struggle to. In fact, it has often struck me how completely invisible the border between England and Scotland is from the train. Enter Scotland by road and you are greeted by a great Saltire of a road sign bearing its welcome in both English and Gaelic: fàilte gu alba. On the tracks, however, there is no such sign, and usually no announcement. We roll casually across the border without ever really noticing we have crossed from one country into the next.
Today it is different, though. The pandemic has changed things. Face coverings are no longer mandatory in England, but remain so in Scotland, and so as we pass from one jurisdiction to another an announcement is made. We have formally entered Scotland, and are now legally required to mask up.
Today, we notice the border
I dismiss the last four days
and their friendly strangers
into the past
that grows bigger every minute.
I think of the past and its friendly strangers often on this journey. This train, for me, is so full of memories of strange, chance encounters with interesting characters I might never have encountered elsewhere.
There was the time I sat alongside two ladies heading away for a birthday weekend who’d brought prosecco and chocolates for the train. They’d not only had the good sense to pack champagne flutes for themselves but had even thought to bring a spare for an amenable stranger like myself. We celebrated and chatted together like old friends for the three-and-a-half hours we knew each other.
There was the time the man sitting across the table stared back at me with a look of confusion and alarm after I reached into my bag under the table and pulled out a book. He hurriedly fumbled with his own bag and then produced, with a look of relief, the very same book. “Wow we’re both reading the same thing!” he said “For a second then I thought you’d stolen mine!” We laughed, and had a fun conversation comparing notes on Denis Johnson.
There was the time a less agreeable passenger beside me loudly announced to the rest of the carriage that I was reading “Russian bullshit” – a harsh but, I suppose, factually-correct assessment of Chekhov.
There was the time I discovered a note in my bag from another passenger saying that he’d been watching me sleeping and had fallen in love. He gave his name and contact details, and suggested we go out to dinner in Edinburgh. (We did not.)
There was the time someone sitting next to me noticed the komboskini I was wearing on my wrist, and started a conversation about orthodoxy, religion, culture, and philosophy.
I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations on this train. Today I don’t speak to anyone today, though. Our masks discourage small talk. Still, this forms a new memory. The past keeps growing all the same.
The train sounds urgent as I am,
it says home and home and home.
I light a cigarette
and sit smiling in the corner.
Pulling into Edinburgh feels like coming home. I’m surprised by the strength of feeling I have for this city. I didn’t grow up here, but I arrived when I was eighteen and was in my thirties by the time I moved out. I didn’t grow up here, but I did a lot of growing up here.
I step out of the station on to Waverly Bridge and am greeted by that old familiar sight of Princes Street Gardens stretching away to the galleries ahead and the castle above. The setting sun casts its warm rays over that reassuringly unchanged skyline. This beautiful city will always feel like home.
Scotland, I rush towards you
London to Edinburgh, Norman MacCaig
into my future that,
every minute,
grows smaller and smaller.
