In Croydon there are towers high, lean, and empty. At the station, an older woman with a natty blue rinse limps for the front carriage, and passes a human-shaped package in a pushchair. This is topped with a hat with bear ears, poking out from the swaddled layers below.

High visibility clothing must be worn in this area.

We head north. Men walk the tracks in hard hats, gazing at this and that. The train slows on a bend. London Bridge isn’t falling down, but it is closed to us today. 

We trundle. Selhurst platform, empty apart from a lady in a fedora and plastic rainwear, cradling her phone on a metal bench. 

Sun. Puffy clouds. Autumn leaves, yellow and green, trees shielding the line. They bow to us, our train slowing to a funeral procession.

Norbury. Obsolete chimney pots and tv aerials. 

We stop. We are nowhere in particular. My ears tune in to the late-career rail worker geezers in the next carriage, on their way to see West Ham, who are doomed.

Topic of conversation: a crap bar in Burgess Hill. The conclusion: “The beer was shocking”. They move on; Colin and Shazza sound a nice, unassuming couple.

Streatham Common slides slowly past, like a broken cartoon. Five liminal years spent here, post marriage and pre enlightenment.

The mainline to London Bridge is closed, we’re following the meandering alternative route. Streatham central, its platform wall still promoting Hideaway, the local-owned jazz club that never reopened after Covid.

Platform people glare, affronted, as we pass without stopping. Please stand well clear of the platform edge.

We gather speed past back gardens and patio doors. Simple family homes now worth millions. Brockwell Park bright with joggers and dog walkers to our left; this is gentrification country. Herne Hill station approach is already busy with artisan breads and young, moustachioed men clutching post-gym flat whites. 

We gather speed and my old worlds pass more quickly now. Network Rail equipment piled behind razor wire fences. Strikingly red berries amid yellowing leaves. Hire bikes scooting down back streets. Loughborough Junction and Coldharbour Works: design studios in former warehouses.

The detail is passing quicker than I can process now. I try anyway. An early modernist church, a masterpiece in brick, climbing above the back streets of Camberwell. Union flags on the balconies of new-build flats filled in between the prewar estates of Walworth. Elephant and Castle a blur of building works and deposit boxes in the sky; these shiny towers loom higher and higher as we approach the river.

There are still plots left undeveloped, slices of the old Walworth, with its lingering pie and mash shops and pubs where Elvis sings every Sunday. A sign expresses a desire for scrap metal (top prices paid). 

We are nearly at Blackfriars. I know these streets well, from my past life as a cargo bike courier. We see Drapers Alms Houses, incongruous and seemingly ancient (but rebuilt), between new commercial properties. To the left, the concrete heart of 220 Blackfriars stands exposed, the latest tower under construction, awaiting its coat of steel and glass.  

And, finally, Blackfriars station. Straddling the river.

From here, we head underground.