Cocoon

A dark and murky morning greeted me when I opened the door today. It doesn't make me downhearted though, I don't mind the gloom.

Two of my favourite travelling... memories is too strong a word, they're more collections of feelings, are from the dark. The first is when I was at university, before Northern Ireland became the tourist mecca it is now ;-) Cheap flights didn't exist, so I used to get the overnight bus home for the holidays. We'd reach the coast of Scotland just after midnight, and the coach would wend its way through the pitch black countryside (I once complained to mum and dad, after they'd moved out towards Knaresborough, about the lack of streetlights. Dad said who do you want them for, the bloody rabbits?!). Anyway, us passengers would be safe and warm inside the darkened coach, with just the occasional overhead light where someone was reading. I remember my dim reflection in the coach window, and Automatic for the People by REM on my walkman.

The second is more recent. My last employer had (and still has, I believe) a site in Co Durham and I spent one autumn/winter driving up there once or twice a week, sometimes calling in on dad on the way home for some tea or just a cuppa. Quite a bit of the road has no streetlights and, even when the traffic was heavy, I used to love the feeling of isolation, being in a little cocoon, protected from the darkness with just illumination from the instrument panel and my headlights lighting the road ahead.

It wasn't so nice driving home tonight...

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