A man in the training station waiting room blows his nose with a handkerchief. He's trying to think of the name of the film starring Jim Carey in which everything is artificial. I want to say The Truman Show. The man he's speaking to says he doesn't think it's the sort of film he'd watch. Maybe it's a trick question because every film is artificial. He uses the word salubrious to describe Oxford Station. I have to look the word up. I've never been so I'm looking forward to a fully salubrious experience. If I ever used that word in a conversation, I think I would take my time over it. Spend at least three times longer saying the word salubrious than I would another word of the same length. Sal-uuuuu-bri-ooous. It seems correct to say it like that. Like saying Wales in a Welsh accent. Way-ells. Or Newcastle with the castle spoken quickly and given much more emphasis than a southerner would give it: new-CASTLE. A woman is warming her face in the rising sun. She faces east. I work out that the train will arrive from the other direction because I'm catching an eastbound train. Oxford will be our vicar who always faces west as his passengers/parishioners all face east. A church congregation always faces a rising sun. Cloisters to their left/north, main entrance to their right (south). When I'm working out my compass points, I always imagine myself in a church. I've boarded the train. The lady sat across from me is reading What a Hazard a Letter is by Caroline Atkins. She's underlining things. I Google the book. The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem. My copy of her complete works spans 770 pages. The book is over two inches thick and yet there are only two known photographs of the great American poet. I often wonder how many people got to see Dickinson smile.
This town used to be rough. You only have to go back thirty years or so. If you came for a night out from a neighbouring village, you’d get your head kicked in for the pleasure of a few pints. You were better off pretending you were visiting from Devon. Somewhere far enough away that a territorial local found you too boring to waste any energy on. These things happened because there was nothing else to do. And the youth were angry. Now all those hellraisers are old and the rage has burnt out and their sons haven’t got the same need to fight. But where does that rage go? Does it just dissipate into the atmosphere? Does it skip generations? This town has changed. For the better some would say. No one fights in public anymore. Not really. Not like they used to. Two-faced battles are fought online and so much of everything else happens behind closed doo...
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