Do NOT underestimate what I mean by this! I am actually and literally sitting on a train (coach L, seat 15A), on a GNER train to Edinburgh Waverley, calling at Retford (where is this place? I have never heard of it), Doncaster, York, Newcastle, somewhere else and somewhere else. When the man comes on the speakers and talks about bacon sandwiches, you can hear dogs barking in the background.
I used to take this train a lot. It used to take four hours to get to York from London. Mobile phones didn't exist then (1988), and you could only travel in First Class if you were a member of the Royal Family or the Prime Minister. Now I am getting the interweb out of the air, York is a mere fifteen minutes from London King's Cross and First Class is not full of Prime Ministers and Princess Anne, but middle aged ladies reading Woman's Own, a very pretty smiley girl to my right doing something very complicated with a spreadsheet, and a junior salesman puffing self-importantly over emails from his print suppliers. Still, it is our democratic right to buy cheap First Class tickets off the GNER website and have tea sloshed into our cups by perky Glaswegians with golden teeth, and long may it continue.
Not much else to report, apart from the strange hair dye used by the two Scottish ladies with smokers' coughs sitting opposite me - and anyway, have you ever tried typing quietly? Exactly.
Coming soon: I pray for cold toast in triangles in a toast rack tomorrow morning, accompanied by strangely cold squares of butter and jam in tiny, tiny pots the size of my thumbnail.
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7 comments:
Welcome to the good old "Embra" as we the locals call it.
Hope you have a lovely stay in Scotland. Next time look me up I'll by you beer.
Weather is crap, it was lovely until yesterday..
Sadly, not coming that far North (yet) - Newcastle today ... tomorrow ... the world. Well, Glasgow. No good at all, is it? I love Edinburgh.
Bit far for me tomorrow as I need to pick up something in Edinburgh tomorrow, copies of the poetry book from the printer, and I'm not sure when they will be ready to collect, but another time would be really nice.
I have faith that your prayer will be granted.
I also love Edinburgh. I used to always try to make it up there for the festival, where you can see the 'real' Edinburgh.
I like Edinburgh as well, but am not allowed to say so out loud in the city limits: the punishment for doing so is to be called 'English'.
If you are English, you can come to Glasgow and rave about how great Edinburgh is with relative impunity: you will merely be cudgeled.
C - I was jerkin' like, but not being funny. I went to university in York from 1988 to 1991. As for JonnyB commenting - it is like the Pope turning up and asking to borrow a cup of sugar. I had to have a lie down.
Porny Boy (is it in your passport?) - I spent most summers when I was a tiny child near Kinross, which is Very Near Edinburgh, so know it well. Also know Glasgow fairly well and love it in a way that makes me pant a bit.
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