The col in London

London Waterloo is where west meets east for train travellers. For more than two hours my morning train had wound mazily through the chalk of southern England, from Frome to Westbury, then switching direction to go via Warminster down the Wylye valley to Salisbury, then switching direction again to head north-east to Andover, Basingstoke, Woking and various other sleepier places that conveyed no meaning to me. Then Clapham Junction and finally Waterloo. And then, by a kind of miracle, you can skip London altogether,  with just a latte and croissant from a stall, a five-minute stroll through an elevated walkway, and a glimpse of the dome of St Paul's dwarfed by today's monuments to science and capitalism, and suddenly, like the moment when you finally reach a col in mountain country, here you are in Waterloo East and facing out on an entirely different horizon, among the trains to Hastings and Ashford and all points south east.  

I had a few minutes to spare, but not enough to make my way outside to where I might grab a smoke, so instead I opened my guitar case and played "A Matter of Time" and "La Mer"*, for the most part inaudibly, due to the hissing and squealing of trains. And I thought once more about how paying £12 to get a strap button fitted to my classical guitar was the best purchase I've ever made, and the most stupidly belated. 

* Songs by David Hidalgo/ Louie Pérez and Charles Trenet, respectively.