I grew up a long way from here, not just in terms of years but in distance. Over two hundred miles, a long way in England, anyway. It seems so. I lived in a small town of about 20,000 people but I never felt I knew everybody; I never have. Life started to change when I was about 18. There had been changes before that, but these were changes I was excited about, leaving home. Discovering things. Differences. The idea that not everywhere was like the little town I lived in. That other people had other ideas and some of them had ideas like me. Maybe it was the times, maybe it was just how old I was, but I felt change coming, an idea that things were going to change in a progressively better way. I don’t know people who think that way now.<\/p>\n

At the same time as this idea of some non-specific progress I was becoming more aware of the past, from the grass mound at Avebury I’d drive past on the A4 going up to London to the fantastic vision of Brunel’s Paddington station, giving the ultimate lie to the gimcrackery of steampunk. Some of the trains I got back home were ancient, especially on the Sunday service to Westbury, but all of them had a certain feel about them, that they were taking me somewhere special. Not to Trowbridge where I lived, not to Westbury where the fast train junction was. But to the future, by way of the past. I wrote this a couple of years ago, mostly. But it speaks with the same voice I think I had back then.<\/p>\n

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Late Train Out of Paddington<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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