I had an email this morning from a former colleague and ongoing pal of mine called Kathy, who, for reasons that defy definition but may have something to do with her not having enough to keep her occupied, with a job and a family and a bunch of houses to renovate, is a reader of this blog.
Kathy, it should be remembered, is at least a normal human being, though I personally would say she's rather above average (of course I would, she's a pal of mine). She sent me a quote from yesterday's blog, about Embankment tube station being west of Westminster, and so being in completely the wrong direction.
"Errr...Tony?" she wrote. "Embankment's actually east of Westminster. You were going the right way..."
Now, my first reaction to this was "Hooooray!! Maybe I'm turning into a directionally-savvy super-navigator after all!"
But then I started to think back on the experience. Not only did I check a map when I got to Embankment, and see the way I'd just walked clearly marked all the way back to Victoria, but then, when I got on the tube to go eastwards home to Plaistow station, we went through Westminster station...which now I discover was to the west. I didn't change trains, I rode all the way home...eastwards...while apparently going through a station that was to the west of me at all times.
There are only two possible explanations. Firstly, I was mistaken. Not impossible, I grant you, but I dismiss this notion for the moment because it's far less likely than the other option. Which is that the universe of travel and transport just plain hates me.
This is a contention I've made for many years now, because frankly, my kind of travel luck feels entirely personal. A 45 minute journey into work routinely takes me an hour and a half. The same 45 minute journey home takes at least two hours. If there's a bus breakdown likely to happen in the city on any given day, I'll be on it. If a tube train gets its cables gnawed by rats and has to sit in the dark for hours waiting to be manually repaired, I'll be on it. If a freak meteor shower is on a collision course for a single Volkswagen Beetle...that'll be me in the passenger seat, hitting the satnav for all I'm worth. If a flock of Canada Geese mutually decide one day that they simply can't bear it any more and fly headlong into the jet engines of a 747, I'll be in seat E42, screaming and wishing I hadn't made fun of all the people who pay attention to the safety procedures.
This, as you might imagine, has had a detrimental effect on d and my relationship over the years. You can only stand waiting for a bald, fat furry Welshman for so many hours, and hear so many fantastical stories, before the joke wears more than a little thin, I imagine. The weird thing is when d and I travel together, it's like Schrodinger's Cat - y'know, the thought experiment where you put a cat in a box with some uranium, and seal the box, so there's a 50-50 chance the cat is alive or dead, so, according to the experiment, it's actually both, simultaneously, until you open the box and look? That's like us - it's 50-50 whose travel universe will be victorious in the battle for control of our destinies on the trip. Sometime she wins, sometimes, like on trips back from Edinburgh, or often on trips to Wales, my universe of incipient travel disaster just won't be gainsayed, and she gets a brief glimpse into the world that otherwise she could dismiss as just a handful of excuses and a dilletante husband.
I was going to say that the universe has never actually rearranged itself on me before, but actually, y'know, it has. The very first time I walked into Soho, I swear, the street shuffled itself behind me and wouldn't let me get out. And several times since in different places, this has also apparently occurred - my by-now infamous instance of getting lost in a straight line, I'm fairly sure, was the result of the universe twisting the end of a street around once I'd gone down it. I mean, we've established I have geographical competence issues, but I can't invent whole new streets!
But I think this is the first time a tube line has defied the laws of conventional physics and geography just to mess with me. And yes, I know what you're all thinking - "senile old bugger's losing it again". No! The sensation of going through Westminster tube that night is impossible strong, because it was, at the time, confirmation of quite how stupid I'd been in walking the wrong bloody way!
I'd like to apologise, on behalf of my private travel universe, for any appearance of error in yesterday's blog. I really would like to...if I didn't think it had done it deliberately, just to mess with us all and make us look foolish. So I think we should just sit here quietly until the universe realises the error of its ways, and apologises in person.
We can wait...
That's fine...We've got all day...
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