electric • expedition

Dear Fi and Jane, aka Dame Daphne and Pippa,

I have only recently discovered you to my absolute shame ...and then actually ... delight... and am catching up with all your podcasts, so this is a late message relating to the podcast I listened to last night …and they’ve become the soundtrack to many nights as I’m not a great sleeper…now worse because I’m laughing so much…well it was the one about your journey to pick up your daughter from Heathrow. Lucky you don’t fly planes or maybe they would end up over Buckinghamshire. I haven’t felt so at home since Terry Wogan and his Togs. The ‘is it me?’ feelings had increased over the years since his sad demise...but now I’ve found another outlet for them... another place where two wise women, Daphne and Pippa told me ‘no...it’s not you...we’re all going through it. It’s everyone else.’ So I thought I’d share my version of digging a hole...with Daphne Spruce and Pippa Clack. And it’s taken me so long to write that I’ve heard the next episode on your 5 hour journey to Bury St Edmunds.

Day before being due to leave Cardiff for Paris; an appointment for ‘bits and pieces’ with Crystal at a beauty salon...and that’s another thing...how can that work at my age...who told me all the schools, the university and lots of places were going to be closed on the next day, Friday because of storm ‘Eunice’...and it’s a shame because I love the name for a character in a novel...i do some writing... but may be hesitant to use it for a while ...or maybe not...a whirlwind woman. I told Crystal I was meant to be getting the train to London in the morning and she said she’d heard all the trains from the south west were cancelled so I cycled straight to the station where they told me the last train on Thursday would be 9.20pm with the added bonus that I could use my ticket on it the man said with a smile. Will I ever learn to read anyone’s face. Would be so useful. Or not. Now 2.30. Seven hours and twenty minutes for what would have been seventeen hours and twenty minutes work to get everything ready and thrown in the case lying empty on the bedroom floor as if Mary Poppins was going to whisk the scattered bits from the floor and pop them in.

At the ZOOM writers group in Paris just to check I wasn’t being stupid as I didn’t know if Eurostar would be running – spent ages trying to get through to them, recorded voice telling me to hold because they were busy ...then telling me they were closed. Jerry in the group said the writing group may not be the best people to ask but I told him they were all I had! They said... why not... just what I needed to hear.

So, did Ms Poppins job...packed up, caught the train, arrived at Paddington around 11.30. Another writers ZOOM group in Montreal scheduled 12.30am. Ok...i’d signed up thinking 7.30 on a Thursday evening was a good time. Would have been if Montreal hadn’t been 5 hours ahead. But I liked this group so much. Had a great spot, in a waiting area of Paddington... computer plugged in as at only 14%...until the Security came and said they were locking the inner area ...and no plug sockets in the outer area.

There’s a hotel by the station and so I went there. I was the only person in the lobby.and I told the young woman at Reception my story and asked if I could sit in the area there as they had wi-fi, have some coffee and join the meeting. And she said ...no. I asked her what time the tube finished. She said she didn’t know. I asked her what time it started in the morning. She said she didn’t know. I said I thought if she was working on reception she’d know these things. She said the concierge would know. I asked her where the concierge was. She said he wasn’t working now, he finished at 7.30pm. I wondered if it was anything to do with the fact I had the contents of my fridge in a separate bag too and may have looked a bit dubious. Can’t bear waste.

Went back into the station, still trying to access and manage to stay in the ZOOM group...wi-fi not great...fight on the next bench and the Security force like a phalanx around the three involved...a man, his sister and another woman. The two women had been hugging I thought, exuberantly, and I thought what it was like to be that age...until I realised they were trying to kill each other as they fell over the back of the bench...punches, screams and shouts. When Security arrived the brother started having a go at them because they picked a fallen case from the ground before asking about his sister. The question of my safety rarely crosses my mind as a friend later pointed out. And so it went on.

One of the Security guys told me there was a plug socket by platform 12. I could see it. Behind the locked door of the waiting area there and the same Security guy said they couldn’t open it. Then one man going into the loo told me there was a socket in the ladies toilet. How did he know? So, there I went and re-joined the Montreal group, in front of a cubicle, by the wash basins, standing up with a luke warm coffee from ‘Burger King’ – only place open, coffee machine must have been winding down like everyone else. Wi-fi kept cutting out...too late to get to St Pancras...so stood there working on the computer just so it would charge up till 5 in the morning when I wanted to get the first tube to St Pancras and try and get the first train – would have to change my ticket as I was on the 4.30 in the afternoon.

It was fine...very tired...and a woman with a huge contraption on wheels of cases and bags strapped to a sort of upright trolley frame went into the cubicle behind me. She must have been there an hour. I could hear rustlings and she came out and went to a wash basin on the other side I couldn’t see and every so often there’d be that deafening sound of the Dyson drier...other driers available ...and she came back. As she was going into the cubicle we smiled and she said ‘you must have a deadline you’re working to’ and I told her the story and said ‘so what’s your story’? And she told me. And a heart-breaking story it was. She’d been living on the streets for 5 years after a series of incidents involving some tragedy I didn’t like to press her about. She’d lost everything and survived now by travelling on the buses to keep warm ..with all she had and her travel card she’d managed to get....but said some of the drivers were mean ...and some of the men wandering the stations were wicked...and she didn’t want to go to a foodbank – and what sort of a society has to have food banks ...and she didn’t want to beg...but strangers did help...and the bad weather was so hard...and she needed to wash herself and her clothes every night in whatever station and her life was so hard...Her name was Alice. Alice in a wonderland she couldn’t see a way out of. A real brave woman.

And I thought here’s me thinking tonight is difficult and wondering why I didn’t just check into a hotel. Well I have no idea...no idea at all of a difficult night. She dashed off then to catch her first bus. As I stayed there 2 more women came in and seemed to be doing the same...how can we live in a society like this...where this has to happen. And then I look at who’s in charge and know the answer.

So, at St Pancras a lovely woman from Eurostar said she could change the ticket but there’d be a cost and I told her the story of leaving Cardiff because of the storm, spending the night in Paddington, and she asked a colleague and said I didn’t need to pay anything and she booked me on the 7 am train. Funny. I didn’t ask her name.

I thought when the train doors opened at the Gare du `Nord it was the beginning of the end. But no. Not yet...not quite. A 24 hour transport strike in Paris. No metro, no bus. Too too tired to walk so fortunately there were some taxis. Stood in a queue for an hour and ...voila. A taxi. Home. Unpacked a little. I rang a close friend in Cardiff who’d thought I hadn’t left and she said you take too many risks and don’t even realise, and that a station isn’t the safest place...and then she laughed, told me to have a bath and sleep. And actually I think the ladies toilet in Paddington was actually the safest place.I rang another close friend who just laughed...told me to have a bath. And I did, fell asleep in the bath. Until the cold water woke me, so went to bed and slept and slept. Then unpacked and pottered till 2 am. Listening to your next episode.

anni walsh aka MP name, Verity Birch (live to about 80 years before falling over, demanding, flaky bark good for lighting fires...)

©2022 Anni Walsh