Delayed, on Southern Rail
Home From the Hill is a 1987 documentary by Molly Dineen about Hilary Hook, an elderly colonel who after a life in Kenya and the Far East retires to a nasty flat in England. Poor old Hilary has never had to prepare his own food and now, in his twilight years, he can’t even open a can of soup. He is horrified by Britain, its culture and bad weather. When I first saw Molly’s superb film as a young man it struck a chord. Some 35 years later, on a brief visit to England from Kenya, I can almost hear and feel myself becoming Hook. It’s not so much that neither of us can cook for ourselves. It’s more that under this dome of grey skies and public service announcements, we both miss the gaudy melon flower of home.
Hell, I know now, will be an eternity of travelling by the local train services towards East Sussex
On the train platform, passengers old and young look like subjugated extras in a dystopian movie. They stand hunched, eating sandwiches and buns, which they bring on to the train to continue chewing while swigging from takeaway coffees. Hell, I know now, will be an eternity of travelling by the local train services towards East Sussex.
We chug along slowly. I try to remember Larkin, but as I look out of the train window at the passing fields I think instead about how Elspeth Huxley described the tamed English countryside – that it was like a castrated leopard. The train slows, then suddenly stops in dead ground. The engines go silent. Outside there are brambles. I think of the high plains back home on the farm, with my herds of cattle browsing through the pasture, Mount Kenya’s glaciers glistening on the horizon.
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