Rough Pasture

I’m on the slow train that passes through the parts neglected by the fast commuter link. A grey November sky has flattened everything to near monochrome, a triumph of the drab. Scrappy birches struggle through the ash-grey shale of the verges, pulling themselves up and away from the clinging tangle of brambles.

Summer would have been kinder: foxgloves and willowherb would add a splash of pink blusher to a chlorophyll  foundation. Looking pretty in the summer is easy: November is merciless. Even the copper and butter of autumn leaves have muddied and blackened. The lines, creases and scars of age and abuse are laid bare: no make-up, no favourable lighting.

Between towns, light industry and waste ground, are areas of sedge and coarse moorland grass. On old estate plans these would be  “rough pasture” – poor land for secondary grazing, on farms paying lower rent for poor soil. The farms,  still put their beasts out between the prefab sheds and roughcast houses, on  land from which the colour has leached, washed out by the rain, drizzle and damp.

A damp in which everything struggles to grow. The carriage drifts past a municipal playground. Rusty swings and a graffitied roundabout that won’t turn. One set of goalposts leaning in the grass. Dog shit in the longer growth, broken bottles on the tarmac. A stage for the early Acts: first shots on a two-wheeler, childhood fights and football. Teenage stand-offs fuelled by Buckfast and own-brand cider. I don’t need to see the rotting johnnies and the Special cans in the bushes to know they’re there.

On our maps, this should be marked “rough pasture”.

 

Written from notes taken Nov 2011