28 March 2014

There’s no-one else on the railway station. The fluorescent lights cast their bright light over an empty platform. Just me on the bench, and a few small flies around the lights. A bell rings intermittently down the line, like the bell at a railway crossing, except there is no railway crossing here. The road goes over the line, and makes a sharp, almost invisible turn left after the bridge. A dog barks. There are cones of light under the streetlights on the town side of the tracks. It’s like a painting of a small country town with all the elements in place. I have a burst of nostalgia for summer in the humid night, warm with the rain. I don’t even like summer, but the thought of summer nights carries with it a feeling of freedom and energy, of joy at the end of a hot day. I recall the joy of a cooling evening rather than the beating heat of an endless day.

A hard-shelled black beetle thuds into me. Another one falls loudly on the platform, landing on its back. It waves its legs ferociously, propelling itself along the ground. I miss the moment where it pushes itself over, but suddenly it’s walking quickly away, like someone who’s made a gaffe at a party. There are more beetles now, and many more insects around the lights. It was dusk when I arrived, but quite dark now. The dark has brought the insects in, concentrated them around the last source of light for the day.