From the darkness of a 5am late-summer Friday morning, a train charged down the spine of a country divided, past paddock and canal, wind turbine and sleeping houses. The only sound, as we passed from Manchester to the Midlands and beyond, was that of nothing at all, the lolling heads of grabbed sleep, the silent music of headphones. Even at Milton Keynes, where London workers piled on in ironed shirt sleeves and shift dresses, the train remained quiet. The silence of the railway carriage, it turns out, is a powerful thing.
Just to the north-west of Euston station, where that train drew in, was where I was lucky enough to be going, somewhere else unique in its soundscape: Lord’s, putting on its best bib and tucker for the Friday of the Ashes Test, the highlight of any cricketing summer – although perhaps, just for once, not this one.
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