Trains and sheds

I recently bought one of these (in fact, this exact one):

via a well-known auction site. I had to travel to another city to collect it, and elected to do so by train, as it worked out cheaper than gas would've cost to get another car up there and back again.

Passenger trains in NZ are in a bit of a sad state, but my 2-hour, $24 journey was wonderful. It started in the late afternoon, so the combination of a low sun and weird tinting on the windows allowed me to pretend that I was in a foreign country.

I alternated that with pretending to be the camera in the Chemical Bros. Star Guitar video by Gondry.

I've been on trains in other cities before - cities unfamiliar to me - and I always judge the city by the view out the window. Consequently, I think of these places as kind of industrial wastelands. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's only now that I've travelled through (part of) a city I know very well that I realise just how wrong I've been.

Of course there are no pretty parks or expensive neighbourhoods backing onto the railway line, and of course the noisy, dirty industrial areas are right next to it!

You know how if you watch all the credits for a movie, when you get to the last, static image, it looks like it's slowly moving? Go to the next paragraph if you don't know what I'm on about. If you do, well, when the train stops after you've been staring out the window at the moving scenery for ten minutes or more, you get the same effect. Everything outside seems to be slowly moving, in fact, I thought we really were moving until I checked properly.

Anyway, no matter what you think, I love my Volvo. It has heated front seats, wiper/washers on the headlights, and two rear-facing child seats that fold up out of the boot floor. It's already done sterling service carting loads of family about, and bringing home an inherited chest of drawers.

All for just the price of about a thousand flat whites. Cars are cheap here.