Commutes I have known

Let me share with you (as the people of the USA would say. Aren't they generous?) part of the motivation for the year-long lunch break. This picture was taken from our house, at 06:43 one morning, making it just ten minutes before I had to set off for my 90 minute commute to work. That commute gave me a 12-hour day. The picture quality isn't great: it was dark, the camera may have had a special setting for this which would have made the result less grainy, but I was still too sleepy to find it. The moon was on the wane, and setting, and it really was that colour. It was rather beautiful.

The date on the picture is 5th March 2007. Yes, March. Do you like dark mornings?

I have done three 90-minute commutes and, now I come to think of it, each for two years.

Brighton to London was probably the worst, partly because the commute was in addition to a twelve-hour working day (though to be fair I only did this seven days in a fortnight: there are limits). It was given an extra dimension (mostly in the form of Time) by the fact that nothing ever seemed to work. My 5-minute walk down to the station was the only part of the journey that never went wrong. Sometimes I was working at weekends, and of course so were the railway engineers. This made for a 5 a.m. start if I were to turn up on time for the early shift, and I was lucky to get back by ten. In the winter months my trips fell entirely in darkness, and to cap it all my workplace was underground. I used to ask Security, as I walked out of the gate at the end of the day, "What was the weather like today?", just to get my bearings.

The late shift brought its own interesting variations on a theme. I didn't have to get to work until mid-day, so at least there were no dark mornings. I got to have a look at the wonderful Sussex countryside on the way in and all the delightful realia of British Rail Southern Region, like the shadow of the Balcombe viaduct over the fields and all the little stations with their fretwork and their flower-planters. But the trip back...I couldn't even fall asleep, because for much of my time there they hadn't yet caught The Southern Region Rapist. For all I knew, at any moment my skills in delicate negotiations, or unarmed combat, could be called upon, and that notorious graffito (written over the communications cord: "This is your last chance to stay a virgin") would somehow lose its funny edge. Although I would at least have a chance to follow a noble family tradition: my grandmother, it is rumoured, once successfully defended her honour with a hat-pin.

Sometimes migraine would get at me during my working day, and I would be hallucinating all the way home. CCTV wasn't all the rage in those days like it is now, so it is possible that I got away with losing my lunch in the planters at Victoria Station unseen. The pain came on in waves, and it really wasn't clever to move about if it was at its worst, or even look around too much. Which explains my accidental presence in the first-class compartment one evening. The guard who checked my ticket must have looked very stern (how was I to know? I couldn't bear to open my eyes) but I was one better: I probably looked like a ghost. "Please. don't. ask. me. to. move. I'll. be. sick..."

Why on earth did I do it? Well, because neither I nor any normal person could afford to live in London during the 1980s property boom. Not if they had any expensive hobbies, like eating.

Glasgow to Edinburgh was somehow a much more friendly affair. For a start the trains were quiet enough that you could acually hear people talking, and the views of the Campsie Fells are spectacular. It also involved the wonderful (and at that time absolutely rock-solid reliable) "Clockwork Orange". The full journey embraced two very different weather zones: all too often I'd be dressed for mild Glasgow rain, only to reach the East coast and be greeted with clear skies and either frost or tee-shirts (or both! Think Geordies only a bit further North).

There's a long climb from Waverley Station to the Royal Mile: depending on where you cross the road you can take 60-odd steps up a ginnel (I should have found out what the Scots call ginnels...) or inside one of the pillars of South Bridge. My path, on the days when I chose the latter, took me past a little cafe which I never even noticed, let alone went into. Which is a pity, because for much of that year one of its customers was a poor single mother, possibly making her coffee last all day, while she sat beside her sleeping child and wrote a children's fantasy novel: a very unfashionable idea at the time. Her name was Jo Rowling.

Somehow when I embarked on commuting from York to Leeds I thought it wouldn't be quite as bad. How could it possibly take 90 minutes when you can get from one station to the other in just 26? Well, the job, which I had thought was going to be totally marvellous and The Best Job In The World, was three miles out on the West side of Leeds. Incredibly those three miles (which I could have cycled had there been a proper route. You know, the sort with no fast-asleep drivers or 40-tonne lorries on) added over half an hour to each trip. When it was working as planned, that is.

I noticed a correlation between the time taken for that part of the commute, and the price of Copper. When the commodity price hit its high point the local entreprenneurs would tool up and help themselves to vital Copper bits of railway signalling gear, and we'd all be left stranded.

I say "we all", but I lie. Only myself and one other of this firm who prided themselves on offering "Low-Carbon solutions" to their clients took the train to work. Two others, to their credit, walked or cycled in. The remainder, over 60 people, all drove. Sometimes their delay stories were even worse than mine.