3 posts tagged “cornwall”

I got caught in one of those horrible loose-end evenings yesterday. I got home too late to do anything and too early to go to bed, and I didn't have any books I fancied reading. And the swimming pool was closed. And I'd been online all day at work so couldn't face being in front of a computer. And I don't really like watching telly. And I can't watch films on my own.

So I wrote a friend a very long email; an email I hope she doesn't feel that she has to reply to in a similar fashion.

And part of it featured my trip to Cornwall, earlier this month. Everything about the trip was wonderful and lovely, but the trip down was slightly trying due to a lack of sleep and... well, you'll see. 

I will now leave you in the hands of my increasingly feverishly scrawled notes from that very evening / very long morning.

I’m on the night train to Penzance. I sit in a silent but fluorescent train carriage. Contrary to what I have been told, the seats cannot be reclined. Furthermore, the arm rest between my two ‘airline’ seats is helpfully moulded and cannot be raised, so if I lean towards the window it digs painfully into the small of my back. These seats are designed for sleep the way Brian Blessed was designed for subtlety. Yet I am surrounded by my fellow passengers who are defying the impossible and catching their forty winks having contorted themselves into a variety of hugely uncomfortable-looking positions. One person in particular looks like he’s auditioning to be in the next karma sutra, only with clothes and on a train. And without a lover. Yes, the amazing new karma sutra. It’s bound to be a best seller.

The woman a few seats behind me is moaning and mumbling in her sleep (I actually wrote ‘seat’ but I assume I must have meant sleep); she sounds not dissimilar to a person slowly regaining consciousness with the dawning realisation that they are being sexually assaulted.

The man directly behind me has a snore like a stoat drowning apologetically. Meanwhile, a middle aged man just in front of me and to my left has a very well preserved face, much akin to a rock face defiantly resisting the sea, but that could crumble at any moment. He is dealing with his current train-bound fate with silent dignity and stoicism – he’s drinking ale and waiting to lose consciousness. I reckon his head will just fall forward onto the table with a gentle ‘thunk’, and his last can of beer will remain, half empty, in his hand until morning.

Alastair is sleeping – or at least is pretending to sleep - peacefully in front of me, while Geoff has left Alastair’s side, to find a seat he ‘can stretch out in’; I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s headed up the train to find a sleeping cabin and kick the door down using his mighty indie strength.

Oh! The injustice of their being beds on the train to which we are denied access.

Oh! How I yearn for sleep.

Oh! How the world is cruel and unforgiving.

Oh! How we should perhaps have paid the extra twenty pounds supplement that would have provided us with a bed for the night.

And oh, how having a lover to hug and lean on right now would be like sweet wine from Allah’s own cellar.

Through all this, the train rushes on through the darkness, ever westwards, ho. I have an exciting feeling of impending doom, as though the train is going to reach land’s end then head over the cliff and crash spectacularly into the sea.

2.50am update

At about 2.15am I went mad with back pain and went for a wander up and down the corridor. At the end of the carriage, I noticed there was a space for a wheel-chair, with a fold-uppable seat.

I headed back to my seat, grabbed my pillow, hat, coat and eat plugs, and headed over to this sacred space. I lay down and, ignoring the obscenely awake man sat opposite scrutinising my every move with his dull, defeated eyes, plugged in my ears, put my hat over my eyes, and tried to get to sleep.

At first, it was hopeless. By lying on the carriage floor, I could hear – and feel – every thud and rumble as the train powered its way along the tracks. This was most disconcerting, not only for the sheer volume, but because of how it reminded one of how weak and puny human bodies are: how easily it would be sliced and smashed if it were to somehow fall through the floor

These thoughts faded, and my mind relaxed, and soon it was racing with inanity and profundity: memories, thoughts, resolutions, brilliant ideas, stupid daydreams, feverish flickering ideas and images – that maddeningly intangible state between awakeness and sleep.

I realised I was dozing over – realised with incredulous glee, indeed. My mind basically went fucking hell wow, I’m actually falling asleep here, despite the conditions, this is fucking amazing, woo, which woke me up a bit again. But I managed to stave off the elation and, then, I was asleep. I was sleeping. Success!

The next thing I am aware of is the train shuddering to a halt. I wake with a jolt. People are leaving the train. Bags are being moved, doors are being slammed.

Then, that horrible announcement jingle, hitting me like a cold haddock to the face: ‘doo-doo-doo’. ‘We’ve arrived at Taunton, and will be remaining here for about an hour, until 3.30am, in case anyone would like to get off the train and stretch their legs’.

My duh-buh-gah brain does some very slow mental arithmetic. So… 3.30am. Minus one hour, ish. Equals… eighty seven? Four and a half? No, 2.30am. I’d only got, at most, ten minutes of sleep.

I am, by this point, wide awake under my hat. I can feel the doomed stare of the man opposite and, sure enough, I remove my hat to find him gaping at me, still.

It’s impossible to sleep with a man staring at you – that is, unless you’ve paid him to do it – so I gave up and got up.

I trudge back to my original seat. I bump into Geoff – unsuccessful in his cabin-robbing, it seems- who has returned to get a jumper to put over his head, in order to ward off the increasingly terrifying guantanamo-esque fluorescent light.

We both pause, wordlessly, to acknowledge and to curse Alastair’s INFURIATING ABILITY TO SLEEP THROUGH ANYTHING, even war and pestilence, and then return to our respective seats, because some battles must be fought alone.

And that’s the end of my increasingly scrawled train notes. Rest assured, though, I didn’t die, or indeed sleep, that night. At around 4am or so, the first lily-livered speckles of dawn appeared, and so I went out into the bit between the compartments, and watched the approaching light. At which point, something breathtaking happened – we reached the sea just as the morning broke. The train thundered past a harbour, and then – gloriously and breaktakingly - was hurtling along right next to the open sea, with waves crashing against the rocks, barely but surreally lit by the encroaching dawn. And I had a moment of epiphany, much like Tom Cruise does in Top Gun when he throws his dead friend’s dog tags into the sea, only less gay. And I felt absolutely amazing.

I didn’t get any more sleep, though I was able to doze for twenty minutes at Plymouth. At about 6am myself and Geoff finally gave up, and bought tea. We weren’t going to get any sleep that night.

We arrived at Penzance perfectly on time, at about 8am. We weren’t able to go to the cottage until 11am, so we did what anyone would do given the circumstances: we sat about by the sea, waiting for the local Wimpy to open.

WimpyPenzance

So, many blog-worthy things have been happening in New Malden of late. But I feel that I need to delay writing about New Malden-based things for a while, until I have a proper New Malden blog in which to write about them. This blog feels more like a prefab: a temporary classroom set up in the middle of the playing fields, and it'll be awfully depressing to trudge across to it in the middle of winter.

So instead I'll write about perhaps the single most joyous moment of my holiday in Cornwall last week.

Myself and Geoff had got up hopelessly early one morning, in order to catch a bus to a beach that was situated a bit further down the coast towards Lands End - a beach that we had reason to believe to be fairly special, like the feeling one gets from looking at a Pelican for the first time.

We arrived at the beach; or rather, we arrived at a car park near the beach. I had an early morning nose malfunction, and so had spent the entire journey attempting to stop snot running down the side of my face. So I immediately hurried towards the public toilets.

As I approached, I noticed there was a fairly long queue of old ladies waiting for the womens' toilet. But, shock, there was a long queue of women waiting for the mens' toilet too.

They spotted me as I approached, and immediately panicked. They were German. The lady at the end of the queue turned to her collaborators in toilet crime, and shouted excitedly and warningly:

"Achtung! Ein Man!"

And of course, I thought this brilliant. Surely the German for 'man' couldn't possibly be 'man'? Perhaps she was speaking whatever the German version of Franglais is. Engleutsch, perhaps?

I saw the snake of ancient ladies, leading towards the male toilet. And I didn't really need a wee. I just wanted to deal with the snot. So I reassured the first woman...

"Es ist ok - ja, ich bin ein man, aber..."

"aber..."

And I realised I didn't know what the German for 'I only want a tissue' was. And I still wasn't convinced that the German for 'man' was 'man'. So I smiled and made a dignified departure.

Towards the beach.

Jamesbeachapproach

Working shifts means that my eating habits go all skew-wiffy. Every day, I convince myself that I'm going to be dead organised and prepare loads of food to bring in to work with me, and every day I find myself scribbling around Tescos at 4.30pm trying to find some reduced price sandwiches that don't look too ghoulsome.

Today, my healthy dinner consists of part-stale pitta breads, cheap-o houmous, and some sweet chilli crisps. I like to scoop up the houmous with the crisps, and then laugh at my brain as it gets confused by the conflicting flavours. For I am the new Heston Blumenthal.

I quite like working shifts. I like the opportunity it gives me to not be at work when most people are (I'll ignore the vice-versa downside for now). A few days ago, I woke up pointlessly early, and so went for a stroll around the streets of New Malden, because the sun was shining and my heart was singing. Everyone was happy as they made their way to work, and I was genially confused as to how people could look so together and awake so early in the morning (ie before 11am).

I was still loitering about the highstreet in time to witness the spooky 9/9.30am handover period when all the luckless employed people disappear into their places of employment and the streets are instead gleefully overrun by the feckless, the smug mothered, the old and enfeebled, the students and the crazies.

It's a bit like when children go to sleep and all their toys come to life, only with more shopmobility.

I'm off to Cornwall on Friday. I finish work at 9pm, and then I rush to Paddington station to get the night train. My friend Alastair has hired his parents' cottage for a week, and so him, me and GEOFF are going to be spending a week watching the football, eating junk food, playing computer games, playing football, walking along the rocks, swimming in the harbour, and drinking huge amounts of alcohol.

The cottage is in a beautiful village called Mousehole, and I used to go every summer and easter holiday with Alastair when we were smelly teenagers. I haven't been for nine years, so I'll be heading back to a place full of halycon memories of eating junk food, playing computer games, etc etc.

So the actual New Malden blog will continue its hiatus for a while longer yet. I had a go at fixing some of the pictures a couple of days ago and, after struggling to find a picture of a tiny dog standing outside a time machine for half an hour or so, I gave up. But please don't give up on New Malden, just yet. One day she will return, just like Jesus.

J x