Usually, I spend time and care planning these trips. And usually, they are train trips, looking - to some extent - for scenery over the quickest or most direct routes, and making sure I have a decent amount of time for ‘ambling about’.
On this occasion, cost, time and logistics pushed me to compromise this aesthetic, which I like to think has some echo of romance and the fleeting feel of “heading off” to new horizons. This was a shame, as flying between regional airports and suffering crappy coach transfers is about as spiritual and glamorous as a slipped disc.
So, to the beginning. The real and proper beginning, once everything is weighed and packed. I’m up and it’s the middle of night. At two in the morning, High Town is quiet but lit by the bright junk shop and its wooden artefacts shining through plate glass. Despite the hour, the run from Luton into Blackfriars feels bog standard apart from the pitch black, raw outside, and even though I’m sharing the carriage with a smartly attired man in a naval outfit - too few stripes for an admiral? - and about eight other people, none of whom seem to have much sense of time or place (is this a train service, or merely a pointless exercise in moving carriages?)
After strolling from Blackfriars in the ‘will-it-won’t-it-rain’ past half full, perfectly still early morning city bars, past a man with a scarf pulled over the lower part of his face who apologised as he passed (for what?), the Terravison bus from Liverpool Street to Stansted was barely endured. I would challenge anyone not to suffer in an overheated, oxygen-free tin can piped with the putrid soft rock strains of E Clapton and other late night/early morning easy listening aberrations.
As the coach picked through a few unnecessary narrow east London streets then struck out on shiny new Olympic carriageways and flyovers, I looked forward to my tomato sandwiches, even while accepting that Terravision’s heat and the shifting weight in my army surplus rucksack will have folded, mulched and fossilised them.
No comments:
Post a Comment