I've made a lot more train journeys since starting University - mainly for visiting other people at different Uni's (though once I tried visiting someone at the same Uni on a train and it went horribly wrong) or going home. I usually take a book to read, or work to intend to do, but sometimes I just find myself gazing out at the window at the world around. It's an odd sense of isolation - you can be rushing through the throbbing heart of a city and yet it's quiet with just the hum of the engine. However it gives you an interesting platform to observe all sorts of aspects of human life, both in the urban and rural areas. Even occasionally those places in between.

For example, going through Manchester today I couldn't help but be impressed at how impressive the city looked, especially all the new buildings in place of old derelicts, or some old derelicts cleaned up and made new again. It really did look like a nice place to live, which is an intresting thing to say about Manchester. As an engineer myself I couldn't help be impressed at the level of skill involved in doing all this - human endevour is really something to be impressed about. Nevertheless when I came across the countryside alongside the tracks (when it's over the tracks you begin to worry) I was also a little saddened that so much of that has been eaten up by the very developments that impressed me, and what is left is often unceremoniously allocated as a rubbish tip by people who live in the suburbs. Even areas not properly tipped on tend to have litter all over the place - this is very prevalent on the side of train tracks.

So next time you're on a train, have a look around, observe what you see, and think to yourself what does it indicate - that mankind is ever advancing, sustaining and improving, or that somewhere along the line something went wrong, that we took ourselves even further from the monkeys we evolved from and lost the ability to live in equilibrium with nature.

Or if you don't feel like that bring a small cutting disc, make a hole in the window and take some cool blurry photos!