A City of Dirty Pissing Bastards and Thieves

5:30am. Coach 16, Seat 11. Dosed up on mocha and the Kronos Quartet. After a couple of minutes of tunnel turning the window into an unflattering mirror, I am gifted an A13 dawn.

The blades of a giant industrial windmill carve the air, there is a concrete road in the sky funnelling unrelenting traffic and I am on a train that travels under the sea. For a moment, this feels like the sci-fi future I dreamed of in 1976. I am moving through a landscape where UNIT trucks are sodium hour ghosts and Luke Haines’ ESP kids lie in wait for the perfect psychic ambush.

We move under the Thames and reverie stops. Kent is resistant to imagination. Its acres of sky dead to any possibility beyond the Monday morning commute. A landscape so bland, the black of the chunnel is actually a relief.

The milk chocolate brown of ploughed fields and verdant pasture that greet me on the other side are constant to the first ring of the Belgian rustbelt. When the last warehouses, container mountains and failed chemical plants eventually splutter out, Brussels’ ugly suburban sprawl begins. A choking catalogue of grey, narrow houses lined up on streets like a grubby second-hand paperback collection.

This morning every stairway and corner of Gare du Midi reeks of urine. I survive one pickpocketing attempt before I even descend to the Metro. A second happens somewhere between Troon and Kunts-Wet. I catch the would-be thief breaking the zip of my bag. Instinctually I stamp down on his hand. There is an awful, sickening crunch of bone. He screams out and drops my passport. Curses, pushes out of the Metro carriage before I can do anything else. As I struggle to pick up my stuff, I miss my station. Later, when it begins to rain, I discover the only thing I lost in the scuffle was my beloved monkey hat.

It is entirely irrational, unreasonable and ridiculous, but when I am let down by Brussels, I take it personally. I feel like shouting: “Both my grandfathers helped liberate you from fascism. Is it beyond you to be something other than a city of dirty pissing bastards and thieves?” Of course, I do not actually shout at anyone, just adopt a sullen face and stomp along till I get to Treurenberg hill. I can forgive a lot when I hear the 49-bell carillon of Cathédrale St Michel & Gudule.

Twenty-three Miles with Knowledge the Sea is Above

The last time I took the train to the continent, it left from my old patch of London around Waterloo. The incongruity of The Cut being linked to central Paris always helped counter any special sense of occasion when travelling. That the Eurostar terminal itself seemed a minor afterthought, a last minute amendment to the daily bustle of the station, only heightened the feeling of it being nothing other than a standard commute.

A decade on, the train departs from St. Pancras. Everything is different. St. Pancras is glorious. Somewhat unfinished, ridiculously vulnerable to terrorism, but glorious. Albionic soil sanctified by the myth of Boudica’s blood provides the perfect site for one of the land’s most amazing Victorian architectural temples. With its gigantic bronze lovers and the statue of Betjeman, it even has its own embracing gods and English saint. Just being there feels momentous. You cannot help but be awed by the manipulation of glass, steel and stone to create practical beauty.

In the old days the train rolled lazily through London and Kent with little sense of urgency. Now we push out of St. Pancras, pause for a second to glimpse the canal beside us and then sprint. Accelerate through tunnels and wide concrete valleys with disorientating speed. When we emerge to recognisable landmarks, we are already hurtling passed the back of Fords and the A13. Moments later the train powers under the QE2 bridge having shed both London and Essex for Kent in less than eight minutes.

The garden if England becomes a dull grey smudge of daylight experienced before entering the Channel tunnel darkness. I travel for twenty-two miles with knowledge the sea is above me and nothing to see from the window except my own reflection staring back. At this point, I recognise the most altered thing about this trip is me. From the cellular level up, I am a changed man from the last time I passed through this analogue of the underworld. Weigh my soul, forgive all hurts. Let me leave the night and set my face to the ecstasy of the sun.

Shooting out of the other end, at first France looks little different to Kent. A countryside of concrete scars, dull brown ploughed fields and bleached vegetation – withered and ragged in its obvious retreat from winter – offers an exercise in Northern European commonality. We move too fast to see any signage where the world is rerendered by the French language. The only early, obvious visual clue of being outside England comes from the over elaborate latticework of electricity transmission towers.

Compared to the standard English tower with its iconic, elegant simplicity, the horned, broad-shouldered French versions look like metal devils. Angled demons emanating the hum of 110 kV. An altered design for something so standard my brain usually tunes it out, serves to reignite my awareness of the intricate power line network spanning the land. Electricity as the thin crust modern civilization is built on.

When we hit Lille-Europe, I jump cut the watch forward an hour. My iPod providing coincidence with The Diodes’ Time Damage. ‘I lost three hours when I blinked today …’