“Honey, can you please write about our feet?”

I sighed as the train doors opened, the needlessly long journey had tired my mind and at its end the catalogue of emotions; anger, frustration, calm, anxiety etc, that had each as a myriad of flashes crossed my face gave way to the stillness of a dazzling sunset: the view from Denham station.

It had been a long day. I hadn’t had a chance to relax and looking back at it, I think the battles from the time I got conscious that morning, to the very moment I had to fight for what to write that night had taken their toll. The snoozed alarm proved victorious over the lingering tiredness that I carried with me like badge to work, the boredom triumphed over the attempts at self motivation and laziness had one over the overarching need for competence. I was efficiently late heading to High Wycombe, where the Heretics (Christians who didn’t seem to comprehend the Trinity properly, ardently sticking to their warped… I think reason has to win over sentiment here). The taste of the, stronger than it should have been, ginger cupcake was ill quenched by the free 500 milliliter Fruit twist I downed as I left.

As though all that wasn’t enough, the voicemail message I was listening to (from someone I barely know – I sometimes hate being available) masked the announcement that the train I was on had been changed to a direct Marylebone one, leaving me embarrassingly on my tired feet watching as the station, like the time between me and the Romanticism seminar, slipped past (I needed to be on campus for 3 p.m, I got on the train at 2:30 p.m, was in Marylebone for 3 p.m and back in Denham at 3:30pm). I had to switch off my alarm and get up, I had to get some work done, I had to be loving with the heretics, I had to take my seat again on the speeding train, and to cap it off, had to write about our feet: the capitulation was total and grand.

© Denis Adide 2009