Headlights dazzle and remembering trains and Russia

I am up and about fairly early in order to start my day and enjoy the daylight hours and get out and back before dark.  It makes sense not to drive with those LED headlights coming towards me in the narrow lanes and driven more on my side than theirs in the best of light and totally unfathomable in the dark and dazzled. 

There are early showings of films and today I will see something new out at the cinema.  I will have coffee and make notes, read the paper, make this early start.   The trains were running when I last looked. A freight train had caused a delay - late running freight train - but now they should have caught up.  What a great image that portrays - Freight train freight train going so fast.   Freight trains also fascinated me when I was on the train in Russia.  All night long freight trains would pass my train going the other way in Siberia.  I loved that sound of the approaching train and then the disappearing sound.  I would sometimes look out at the lights too but mostly I was sleeping and so snug and warm that I did not move from my bunk.  

I liked the Russian way of life.  Irina lived a happy life in her apartment and her former husband lived in a bedsit when once he had been a hospital consultant, a happy life of two rooms.  She pointed it out when we passed it - 'he lives up there' - she said pointing to a window above a shop.  Irina spoke fluent English, went swimming once a week, shopping, occasionally took paying guests like me and cooked for us and some like me paid her to be our guide,  and did whatever she did in her private room which she did not show me.  I think she had a television and a chair, her bed and her cats.