The Thrill of What Might Be.

I sometimes fear I’ve boxed myself in a little with the name of this blog. Perhaps it should be ‘David in the kitchen, with a desk in the corner for when he wants to write about something other than food’.

Writing a blog was something I’d wanted to do for a long time and taking a creative writing course a couple of years ago provided the much needed final push to make it happen. The course was based around life experiences and memoir, although I did manage to weave my love of food into some of the work I produced, for much of what we were doing that wasn’t an option.

For a self-confessed glutton and obsessive baker, the food posts are always going to be predominant on here, but I do want to broaden things from time to time. A bit more memoir and a bit more fiction

I wrote this piece in response to a writing challenge that Alison Trollop posted for her Patreon followers. She asked for something of approximately 250 words and trains had to be central to it. It’s a little bit memoir and a little bit of fiction.

It’s not the getting there or the leaving home I miss, it’s the travelling. The expectation and  anticipation. The buzz of the unknown, the thrill of what might be.

Stuck at home these last nine months I’ve pined for many things, whined for what I’m missing. And at the end of the day, it all comes down to going somewhere. Stepping out of the routine and going just beyond the horizon.

For you and me that will always mean taking a train.

Remember when we were still illicit, looking over our shoulders all the time, wondering who we might bump into, what might be around the next corner. Back then the train was our route out, our escape.

We were married, admittedly not to each other, and neither of us had done anything like this before. Both of us proof perfect that you’re never too old for a mid-life crisis. Sometimes we’d travel together from the start, other times we’d meet at a station cafe en route. Almost as if we were characters in Brief Encounter. Looking back it seems a little crazy, but damn it was exciting.

Those were the trips when we really got to know each other. When we both realised there was no going back to lives we didn’t want anymore.

Ten years on and neither of us did go back. We may both have gotten a little scorched by some of the fires we started, but we’re not illicit anymore and when this is all over we’ll jump on a train and go just beyond the horizon again.