(no subject)

Alkmaar

The station seemed like a parade, so crowded and fluid for a Saturday mid-morning with the clouds glowering. The people were here to see the trains, and the trains stood proud puffing steam, the smell of their smoke was like nothing I've known before. Call and response, each whooped its whistle and the middle aged men and the families swarmed about them all but garlanding the engines with flowers. An ambulance arrived to carry away one whose railway joy had led to cardiac failure, and it's three tone ice-cream van chime joined the carnival. Agents of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen were giving away canary yellow umbrellas and the trains were still whooping and there were red and white flags in the streets of the town.

The rain continued and in the suburbs I saw a windmill tilting at a petrol station, flanked by council blocks and empty college buildings. Back in the town the whistles still sounded across the low terraced houses, from this distance they sounded mournful and desperate, spirits of fire and water and air trapped in iron barrels and tortured.