What is that feeling?
Trip Start
Jul 26, 2010
1
12
Trip End
Ongoing
Maldon, England, United Kingdom
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Having had my hard drive die on the day we arrived it has become impossible to keep this blog up to date, combined with us having very few evenings to ourselves.
A couple of weeks ago I went to Budapest to see my old friend Alexis. I shouldn’t really complain about all the travelling I’ve been doing should I? But where once I loved the process of travel almost as much as the final destination two trips back and forward to the other side of the planet does tend to take the edge off of travel excitement.
I was travelling alone this time and as anyone who knows my similarity to the Mr Stimpson character in ‘Clockwise’ this meant that I could set my own timetable. I left Yeovil at 6.20am bound for Luton. The train was relatively empty with the few other passengers wrapped up warm with their iPods plugged in. I stuck on some D&B and snoozed all the way to Waterloo.
Rather than grabbing some breakfast I decided to push on the St. Pancras and arrived well ahead of schedule - excellent. I should at that point have stopped for some food but spotting a train that was leaving in 5 minutes I decided to get even further ahead. I arrived, smugly, at Luton just over an hour ahead. Of course I then discovered that a) my flight had been pushed back an hour and b) the food options at Luton were less attractive than a trolley dash at LIDL.
Having wheeled my bag around the terminal several times in the hope that it might miraculously get bigger, like an inverse Tardis and having worked out that if I caught a bus into Luton to search for a cafe that wasn’t charging £6 per sausage I would make it bag just in time to wave my plane off I joined a long checkin queue armed with a sandwich from M&S.
EasyJet are great in my opinion. The system where you pay extra just to get to the front of the bus is hilarious because once you join them on the bus there really is nothing other than typically British restraint to stop you slowly working your way to the front too. It is then simply a case of walking very quickly to the steps and securing your seat in the emergency aisle with it’s extra 2cm of legroom.
Next to me were a couple who sounded like they were from Essex, they were retired I would imagine and she looked as though she had spent most of her life either under a sunbed or on the beaches of Benidorm. For some unfathomable reason she spent an hour with her bag on her lap rooting through each of the pockets in turn. She never actually retrieved anything simply unfastened once pocket, scratched around, closed it up and moved on to the next. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to it and there were 6 pockets to choose from. Every time she rearranged whatever was in there she jabbed me on my arm with her leathery elbow. Clearly her skin was so toughened that she could not feel me at all and I spent much of the time huffing like an asthmatic.
I love Budapest and had an interesting time including the aforementioned Saturday night out. I wasn’t the one that ended up messy, having decided early on not to drink excessively. But I can’t really explain how it all went wrong, suffice it to say that actors and actresses are a breed apart.
I managed to get a couple of runs in which I was glad about but it was very hot and the 10k that I did nearly killed me. The moment I stopped moving I turned the same colour as a radish and dripped so much sweat that people walking past were slipping over like Keystone Cops.
On my return to England I had booked a night in a hotel at Gatwick since getting back to Yeovil late in the day seemed difficult. I decided that I would use the following day to go to the Saatchi gallery before heading back. As usual it was interesting, outrageous and ridiculous in equal measure. I had also arranged to meet an old friend from our early NZ days (Maggie) for a drink and found a nice little pub just off the King’s Road. Collecting my bag from the gallery later in the day I just had time to show Maggie the Richard Wilson installation. I saw it when the gallery was on the South Bank and loved it there too. For those not familiar it is a room which has been half filled with sump oil. Because it is so black it simply reflects the room creating quite a disorienting feel. However, Maggie didn’t realise what it was and thought that it was simply lights on the floor (actually the reflection of the lights above). She must have thought me such an idiot to be so in awe of it! She has since been back and now ‘gets it’, which doesn’t make me feel any better.
The time is running out now. Tomorrow we have a family day with Gill’s family but before that a 10k race not far from where we are staying. Beck and I are both entered and I’ll let you know how the boy does.
On Monday we head to London for 5 days. I can’t tell if the knot in my stomach is related to tomorrows race or what is happening next week.
Of course it could just be the clotted cream.
