At last the move is complete; we are now adoptive Wegians. We moved through last weekend with the help of Jeff and Jez at the east end and the Captain at the west, and for the past week have been thundering back and forth in the Trøll with the sundry bits and pieces that we forgot to pack in the van.

La famille have now all been to the new crib and seem to generally like it. My dad was moved to gift me an electric drill — My First Power Tool TM — and now, predictably, every flat surface looks like it needs a hole in it. First lesson learned: Ikea shelves do not take well to being perforated with such a tool. The result is somewhat akin to the effects of a hollow-point bullet: clean entry, messy exit. The laminate on the out-side splinters and craters away from the drill point, and there’s little hope of fixing it short of just hiding it underneath something. A stereo is ideal, I’ve found.

Now, then, I’m faced with three and a half days of commuting each week, and today I took my first trip into the rising sun. Ash and I took the bus from the south side up to Queen Street where I caught the pleasingly empty 8.30 AM train, settled into an airline seat and fired up the iPod. The journey was far more engaging than I remember — maybe now it’s necessary rather than optional means I’m investing more attention in it.

As the train neared Falkirk, with the cuttings rising and falling irregularly, the land spread out in a concave, lumpy plain to a row of low hills running parallel to the tracks. The shallow angle of the sun meant that everything took on slightly unreal proportions: little model sheep moved about the grassy fields; toy cars buzzed along a Scalextric track hidden behind a dry stane dyke towards a model village of identically harled houses.

Later on near Polmont, vast plumes of steam rose up like dormant geysers from behind the same hills, now covered in combed yellow straw. The tips of Grangemouth‘s steel chimneys occasionally glinted, and between them concrete cooling towers sat squat and grey.

It’s funny, but each time the train rolled into a station the sun was blocked out by an embankment or a platform roof, leaving the train in shadow, while the rest of the time the cabin was airy and bright. In this case, it’s not the destination but the journey!

P.S. The final Canadian entry is coming soon, honest.