8am St Pancras. A burst of sky blue. The roof arches strain from their earthings, trying to merge with the true sky above. Small suitcases on wheels roll smoothly across dark brown wooden floors in this unexpected haven.
12 noon Gare du Nord. Golden globe-shaped street lamps line the platforms, and set this Parisian scene. Rows of trains lie dormant - no last minute train panic here. Pigeons hunting for scraps, clustering in grimy corners, make the space under the shed-like roof no different from outside.
7pm Paddington. Tableaux vivantes around the station - the people watching departure boards like hawks - spring into life when the last-minute platform announcement is made. Like a huge flock of birds falling on a single crumb of food, they head to the ticket barriers, desperate to get there first.
9.30pm Bristol Temple Meads. Brunel's echoing train shed, where choirs of announcers apologise for the late arrival of trains from Weston-super-Mare, London, Cardiff in polyphonic chorus.
2 comments:
Train stations are such perfect homes for metaphors, aren't they?
I think of them as temples of transient permanence (and of course permanent transience too). When you look hard enough, every single thing in a big station seems to represent something of human creation or interaction, however microcosmically!
Exactly - always shifting, yet remaining stationary (excuse the pun).
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