Series of short blogs about things I see on the way into work. 

20th Feb 12
This route is not actually something I would normally see.  I’m on the way Out of London for some external training.  Cold this morning so we are steaming past frosted fields and trees tipped with lace.  The brambles are particularly striking in their frosty casings.

Slept badly.  Anxious night fearing to miss the train, plus I hate going to Paddington via Hammersmith and City Line at any time, because there is only one damn staircase that serves as both entrance and exit.  They are building new ones but  until they’re done it’s just mad.

Walking down the platform where part of the ceiling has been restored, and you can see the original Brunelian glory of the place.  Not a great sooty steampunk cathedral at all, but light and airy, silver red and white.

I changed at Reading from a train leaving London Paddington to one going towards London Waterloo.  I found this funny, though nobody else I told seemed to.  A young man sat down opposite me, pulling from a rucksack something that looked very like a soft-bound copy of a PhD thesis.  I spent a moment dithering about whether to ask, then my voice took over and I found out that, though a PhD student, his ream of papers was a set of statistical course materials.  He’s a second year zoology student looking at bird populations in South America.  I tried to sound reassuring about finishing.