Ben Welsher | Writings

Looking out of the country at the burgeoning country I can't help but slip out of London-centric mindset for a second as it seems no peace was ever had that was not felt here first. I was leaving the city different to how I once came into it at the start of things. At the start of a great wanderlust when in reverse the trees gave way to the gloomy grey towers that were the set of those first timid steps. They must have embossed themselves in my mind with their glinting, endless windows as I could not help but return to them years later when the lust was satisfied. A restless mind ever reaches though for what it doesn't have and ensconced in the metropolis the towers oppress me. I seek unbroken stillness, green and leafy silence, an unfettered wind to lift the soul. But the train hadn't even crossed London's great moat yet. A strange building rises like a wave from beneath the trees, a brutalist redo in brick of a Jodhpur palace. The train burrows through a cutting in th