The Commute is a book that unfolds as if a single journey into and out of London. It is a tapestry of poetry, visual imagery and prose that has been carefully woven together across the years of doing this necessary travel to work and back, familiar to so many. The small details of life are noticed here and celebrated, threaded through with a humour and wisdom that provides often moving insights into the human condition. There will be many who will recognise the unspoken thoughts and feelings. Those who have experienced the mundanity, who have seen the daily snap shots of life, the changing world, the routines, the weariness and the alienation. Each of us anonymous cogs turning within the machine. It is a book that at its heart is a salute to the undimmed human spirit of the commuter. To all those who get up day after and day and despite those cold and lonely mornings they quietly and resolutely keep on keeping on.
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CONTENTS
Preface
THE JOURNEY IN
Insomniac Demons 1 The Train Waits for No-one 3
Winchfield
6.35 to London Waterloo
The 6.35
Winchfield to Fleet
Within the Memory of Earth
Spirits
Moonstone of Pale Yellow
The Soft and Fragile Webs
Woking Station Platform
London is Here
Next Stop is Clapham Junction Train to the Coast
Oblivion
Steel upon Steel
A Single Red Rose
Workmen at Dawn - the 295 Lavender Fields
A Little Baby
Peeling Open
Pink Fluffy Slippers - Strath Terrace
All Things Pass
Great Chalk Roads
Coat and School Bag Flapping
Two Black Crows
A Barefooted Soul - Tyrawley Road A Bag of Potatoes - Shorrolds Road You Know
It's a Good One
A Scraping Sound - Munster Road Roving Eye
Paradise
Turning of the Day
THE JOURNEY OUT
Wind
Rain I
Rain II
July Heat, White Heat
September Suncatchers by the Riverside Smoke and Dust
Deep Mellow
Stand Clear of the Doors
Two Trains Diverge
Picadilly Line - Just Past Gloucester Road
Green Park - Connecting Tubes and The Depths Bowels of the Labyrinth
The Void
Amongst the Echoes
Loneliness 89
Fatality on the Tracks
Waterloo
Wanting to Become a Better Person Brexit, Terrorism and Covid 19 Waiting to
Go
The 19.12 Pulls Away
Stairwells (The Tower Block)
The Conductor
A Breeze Passes Through
Woking Again
Conversations Sift
21 Steps
The Gleaming Eye
Andrew Johnston Davies is a psychiatrist, artist and author based in Hampshire. Whilst the countryside remains his natural habitat and the root of his artistic inspiration, he ventures into the city on a daily basis where urban landscapes, strangers and the commute have all become familiar images. Themes that explore disconnection, alienation, loneliness, love and loss. The Universal themes of life. Andrew states that "Art is the drawstring that brings the different strands of my life together and yet for years it had been a private affair with writing kept within notebooks and images kept within drawers." This all changed in 2019, when the Argentinian magazine La Tundra selected his writing and images for publication, after which point Andrew was inspired to complete The Commute and make Art, poetry and prose a serious pursuit.
