Please turn down the volume

We’re standing on a train platform in the middle of nowhere – the kind that doesn’t even have a ticket office or a loo (and if you need to pee you have to just mindlessly panic, praying that the train will come any second now, while desperately considering squatting in the nearest bush).

I am buttoned up in my winter coat and balancing on one leg like a flamingo – hopping up and down in tune with the painted yellow line on the platform. The wind is shaking the leaves in the trees like some sort of improvised percussion instrument, and a few stray autumn leaves are chasing conker shells around the ankles of the oaks.

It’s that strange overcast kind of day that coats everything in a pasty white light – it could be 6pm or 6am and it’s difficult to tell which.

‘This is how the apocalypse would…