Coach trips

Some bits and bobs I thought about on the coach on the way to and from London this weekend:

At first I think that the romanticism of the journey is dented somewhat by passing through Stoke. Still, I saw Patrick Wolf play there so some stardust might have rubbed off.

Later I get on an observational/psychogeographical roll in the old notebook:

Factory-allotment-scattered council houses-abandoned double toddler buggy-roundabouts-railway bridges-secluded passages network to a soundtrack of Atlas Sound covering 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart'. Monolithic pebbledash, tessellating concrete as base for superstructure of soured dreams.

Someone I meet in London tells me that they briefly lived there and that when a football match was on, all the electricity would go out in the houses surrounding the stadium.

Perhaps a video with my face replaced by an arts and crafts pottery sun ornament. I'd skip between the cumulus cloud paths, keeping watch on the parish below. Plotting. Occasionally descending to lurk in the oil seed rape.

A sign for a development in nowhere-land: 'Prologis Park Rugby Phase II'. It reminds me of the one on the way to Liverpool Airport: 'The Omega Opportunity is opening up'. A virtual encirclement with vague yet very real void-power. All very Iain Sinclair, or Stanley Donwood.

On the way back I'm not really conscious but get awoken right before the end of the journey by an eruption of conflict; a man deciding to tell two kids that their constant bubble gum blowing has been driving him berserk. After five hours. Soon a near-riot ensues on the back seat after the coach driver aimlessly circles round the centre of Manchester about three times before depositing us on Chorlton Street. "Fuck's sake, go *that* way! NaaaaaaaaOOOOOOOOO, *THAT* way!"

Coach Trip this was not.