gets me out to the town’s new station in 15 minutes. The whole site is built in new brutalist style, all slot-together concrete sections, zinc post security cameras and razor wire perimeter fences, ready to withstand the zombie apocalypse. No whisper of aesthetic slipped in here, hard utility ripped up the architect’s doodling. But the track skirts flooded Otmoor and curls through the Chiltern woods, the scenery shames the conveyance. I roll back from my meeting cloud-gazing, hideaway villas glimpsed through the trees, writing retreats imagined, a few seconds of other-life possession as the invisible thread draws me on home.
