This sight makes me happy, depressed, thrilled and tired all at once.

It’s MY train you see. Not First Great Western’s train, MY train. It’s the Penzance train pulling into Reading station to take me home. Frankly I don’t care if it’s sharp or not, interesting to anyone but me or not, it’s just one of the best moments of a journey for me.

I am going home.

Why does it make me happy? Well, I’d like to hope that’s obvious. Why depressed? Well, because at this stage I know I still have the best part of four hours before getting off it and being actually home. Why thrilled? Because it’s on time and not too crowded….OK, OK I couldn’t tell it wasn’t too crowded for another few minutes, but it wasn’t. Why tired? Usual stuff really – by this stage, it’s already a long day. I left ‘home from home’ just after 7am, was at my desk well before 8am and I know it’s going to be 10.30pm before I can get out of my work clothes, drop my bags and just be me again. Not the me that’s the corporate whore but the me that’s fake wife to DM and fake mum to two dogs, four chickens and a wabbit. Does that mean I'm just a fake all round I wonder?

Do you know that every time I come home, my first gulping breaths of clear, clean, sweet Cornish air are laced with 70 miles an hour diesel fumes as I shove my head into the night air from the train window, often before we even pass Menheniot, I’m so desperate to blow away the other Linda and leave in her place this Linda.

Do you know that I doubt if I’ll ever tire of seeing the mast or of seeing DMs face peeping over the iron bridge as I walk the platform or the sheep on the road, looking like ghostly cotton wool puffs in the gorgeous Cornish mist.

My home from home is the best place to be if I can’t be here. I’m so lucky to be there rather than some crummy hotel in Paddington or Bayswater that’s for sure. Mind you, that’s not to say that I’ve not been extremely lucky all of the last year, staying with lots of wonderful friends too, it’s just that I needed a place to ‘hang my hat’ and now I’ve found it, after a few false starts.

My caption is from the song that’s in my head – Morningtown Ride, one of my childhood favourites as sung by the Seekers. I have a feeling it’s this song that DM reports a reel-to-reel tape exists of him and his sister singing in the bath. For me it’s the epitome of warmth and safety and that’s what I always get when I come home.

Last year, they were 'almost blue', this year, they're almost over.....