England

Welcome aboard South Western Railway’s
Service to Dorking. Calling at Earlsfield,
Wimbledon, Raynes Park, Worcester Park,
Stoneleigh, Ewell West, Epsom, Ashtead,
Leatherhead, Boxhill & Westhumble,
And Dorking.

Inside my head I count the seconds
Before the voice begins again.

Please ensure you have a valid ticket.
Anyone without a valid ticket
Or payment method, will have to pay
A penalty fare or face prosecution
With a fine of up to one-thousand-pounds.

One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Four
Five . . . Six . . . Seven . . . Eight

Any abusive behaviour towards our staff
Will be reported to British Transport Police
And could result in prosecution
And severe penalties for offenders.

I turn to my book and try to read:
‘I never saw that land before,
‘And now can never see it again’.

The next station is Earlsfield.

The tinny beat from a man’s headphones
Buzzes in the ears of a trapped fly
That cannot reason well just now.

If you see something that doesn’t look right,
Speak to staff or text British Transport Police
On six-one-zero-one-six. We’ll sort it.
See it. Say it. Sorted.

Held against her mouth like the lip-plug
Of an African tribe, a smartphone
Records the murder of time by words.

This is Earlsfield. Please mind the gap
Between the train and the platform edge.

I count the dead seconds out again:
Five . . . Six . . . Seven . . . Eight

Welcome aboard South Western Railway’s
Service to Dorking. Calling at Wimbledon . . .

And so the voice continues speaking
Uninterrupted by my thoughts,
Slowly counting down the stops until:

The next station is Box Hill & Westhumble.

And before we enter the tunnel —
There it is! Glimpsed through the unopen-
able window, before I can write
That something doesn’t look quite right
Between the train and the platform edge:

England.

— September 2025

The quote is from the opening lines of the poem by the English poet, Edward Thomas, ‘I Never Saw That Land Before’, which he wrote in May 1916 while his unit, 28th Battalion, London Regiment (Artists’ Rifles), was at a training camp in Essex. Within a year, in April 1917, Thomas had been killed during the Battle of Arras.

In his Pensées (1670, Section VI, ‘Les philosophes’, no. 366), the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, wrote: ‘The mind of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independent that it is not disturbed by the first din made around him. It does not need the sound of a cannon to disturb his thoughts; the creak of a weather-vane or a pulley is quite enough. Don’t be surprised if he cannot reason well just now; a fly is buzzing in his ears. [Ne vous étonnez point s’il ne raisonne pas bien à présent, une mouche bourdonne à ses oreilles].’

It was part of his inversion of such received wisdom that, two hundred years later, Isidore Ducasse, the French writer and self-styled Comte de Lautréamont, wrote in his Poésies (1870): ‘The mind of the greatest man is not so dependent that it should be disturbed by the least sound of the din made around him. It does not need the silence of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The sounds of a weather-vane or a pulley are not necessary. The fly is not reasoning well just now. A man is buzzing in his ears.’

For the sake of the metre and alliteration, I have left Motspur Park out of the stations between Clapham Junction and Dorking. My apologies to the trainspotters. But my transcript of the public announcements is, unfortunately, exact. Despite the piped warnings of the British Transport Police, on 1 November, 2025, a Black man attempted to kill 11 passengers with a knife on a British Rail high-speed train from Doncaster to Kings Cross in London.