A luggage tag for train 23

SJ first class lounge was a welcome rest stop, and the food provision was on point. Then to our old-school first class carriage - wide seats with leather armrests and brass recliner levers. Shabby chic with blinds but no aircon. The carriage is split in three with wooden partitions. Newspapers but no coffee. Luggage racks are loftier than on the newer trains - it’s a bit of a stretch. Tables split fold across the double width a few centimetres on each side to make getting-in space. Mains power plugs, not USB.

The train gets to pretend it’s a subway train for a few minutes, diving deep underground and passing through one of the tube stations. Flags aplenty for yesterday’s Pride in Stockholm centre. I catch sight of a flag shaped swimming pool in the river, four triangles for swimming in separated off from other river users. We go into the Swedish interior, thunder clouds brewing. UFO on a stick water tower. Several minute-long tunnels and ears popping. Ruth produces a pilfered lounge Clementine. (My phone insists the word Clementine should always be capitalised, perhaps it should.) ((Also… “Next up for your listening pleasure, a BBC live recording from Pilfered Lounge Clementine!”))

We slow for a bridge across a broad river with container ships on one side, sand dump and distribution on the other. I commence a puzzling hunt for the chocolate I took from the lounge, mostly because the train feels 29 degrees and I hope I’m not sitting on it. It remains unfound. We snack through our morral, depleting reserves but there’s still an almost empty glass jar of jam in there that we’ve had for a week so the bag doesn’t feel noticeably lighter. We travel light/we do not travel light. The pretzels that have been almost upended several times are eventually finished. I drink my miniature juice box too slowly and the paper straw dissolves before empty. We read, write, collage.

We contemplate why do our trains not have a little sheaf of bin bags hanging below each table, opening from the middle out so only one gets used at a time? It’s another genius thing we should import.

Another hot take: backs of houses and back-lots are way more interesting than fronts. That’s where the old tractors, chickens, log piles, sitooteries, and weird yellow cars live. (Sometimes all at one property).

Lush and variable farm and town scenes pass as I’m listening to Page One writers podcast with Marco, Tariq and Chiara. The train becomes too hot all at once - there’s a reason the new carriages have air-con! As we pass vast freight yards every freight train carriage is tagged - the graffiti kids have been busy. Farmland changes to woodland. Trees grow around car-sized erratics. Glistening lakes. Water from the dining car is pleasantly cool, I’d have paid any price! We arrive on time and keen to get out into Karlstad.