Day 25/42 - Trains and other journeys.

Friday 9th July

Off to London this morning - France is just a day and a train ride away. It still blows me away that you can get on the train in London, and get out in Paris, having travelled under the English Channel. But there are more joys before that.
Margaret drives us to Winchfield station. She’s sad to see us go - even though she will join us in France in four days time.
We wait on the platform, surprised at the number of people with cameras poised. What’s going on? We are answered within minutes as a marvellous old steam train pulling 12 carriages pulls in to the platform opposite. Click go the cameras - all the train and photography enthusiasts are out in force. I am so gob smacked I almost forget to take a picture myself. This is how I remember travelling, in the days when we toured with my Mum and Dad. Early morning train calls, checking out of digs…the noise of the steam, the smell of the coal, the grey smut all over us. Oh, it was truly wonderful in a way that those who don’t remember steam trains could never understood. Rod McKuen has a great poem called The Art of Catching trains which starts “I came through the clothesline maze of childhood…….” Love that. My childhood maze was props and skips and band calls at every theatre - but the train was ever constant.

Margaret tells us that last year the Flying Scotsman stopped at Winchfield. This locomotive is called Sir Lamiel in royal fashion. I wouldn’t have missed this for quids.

Once in London we check into the Novotel ( another online special at less than 50%) where we are upgraded to an executive corner room with a lounge area. Maybe it was my smile or our easy going response when told the room was not ready.

We dump the bags and head off to meet my cousin Sue…who swears we have not seen each other since I was twelve. We’re meeting at a swish Nouvelle Cuisine ( didn’t know it still existed) restaurant in Primrose Hill….very swank, but all style and no substance - and horrendously expensive even though we are splitting the bill.
Aaah, but the company is worth any price. Sue and Ivan fit so well into our life it’s as if they have always been there. Ivan works in Feature films…an Academy Award winning sound engineer. He and Sue met on Ring of Bright Water back in the sixties. Love that film and book…. It has fostered in me a deep affection for otters. Sue and I pick up where we left off 50 years or so ago. Ivan and Tony hit it off immediately. He’s a sweetheart and, like beloved, looks younger than his years…..he has a childlike enthusiasm, wears a panama hat and drives a soft top E type jaguar with the top down. Heads turn as they drive down Regent’s Park Parade. More surprises are in store. Ivan is from Newquay…I discovered that about three years ago. And we went to the same ( but separate and non co-educational) school But I now learn that he also lived in Bonython Road, just a few doors from me….AT THE SAME TIME Yet we never met. What’s more, his dad built the house I lived in and where I first started writing.
And they tell me the story of how Ivan knew his way to Sue’s parents’ house the first time he drove there. It turns out he was there, at the bottom of their driveway years before with a boy scout jamboree. Sue even took a photo of him when she was a girl….and discovered it still in the attic of her parents house. Serendipity? Fate? Or some divine plan? If you plotted that in a storyline people would groan and think it corny - truth is more cliched than fiction - and almost always more interesting.

We hate to part….the promise of real friendship is so tantalising - and I say “Come to France ….stay a few days.” Sue hesitates but Ivan says “Why not? We could drive down.” So perhaps we will see them in a week or two. Fingers crossed.

Tonight we took Tony’s sister Bernardine to the theatre. The Arts theatre is in the centre of the west end just off Leicester Square. It has introduced some brilliant shows over the years. This was NOT one of them. Lilies of the Land is about the girls who fought the war by helping the farmers in the Land Army. It got rave revues but is doing lousy business. Sometimes the public IS right. It should have been moving and endearing but was neither. My one piece of theatre in London and it was totally forgettable. Such a shame. Supper in the Spaghetti House across the road and home for a few hours sleep. Tomorrow ……France. J’espere qui ce vacance est le plus meilleur du monde!