Author Archives: Grace Lessageing

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About Grace Lessageing

I am writer of novels, short stories, flash fiction, blogs. I lead a creative writing group. I am an Ex infant teacher, living in Christchurch, Dorset, UK. My brand new novel, The Conways at Earthsend was published on January 28th 2021 can be found on Amazon, Waterstones, Hive and Goodreads and is available in either paperback or e-book versions. You can also read The Year of Familiar Strangers, available as an e-book from Amazon. You can visit my website: janedeans.com or my author page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jane-Deans-Novellist-Short-Fiction-and-Blog-102757711838272 Happy reading!

New York 1997. Part 2.

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So-New York then; sans car but with enthusiasm and itchy feet.

We walked, we got a sumptuous breakfast in a swanky diner. We took the subway to Penn Station. With no way to drive to Niagara we’d decided to try the train. How hard could it be? After managing, with some difficulty to decipher the timetable, we bought two tickets to Buffalo, from where [in our ignorance] we assumed we’d be able to access the falls. The tickets were for Tuesday morning, leaving us some city exploration in the meantime.

We left the station and went to the pier to get a Circle Line ferry trip around Manhattan Island with tour guide narration, an informative but foggy voyage marred by rain, the sights described mostly obscured by thick mist. The tall skyscrapers of the skyline had their heads in the clouds. Nevertheless the famous landmarks of New York duly appeared-The Empire State Building, The World Trade Centre, The Statue of Liberty, all misty but thrillingly real. We passed the apartments of the rich and famous, learning of outrageous property prices and chugged under the Brooklyn Bridge. A chilly wind sprang up. We sipped hot coffee and leant on the cylindrical outer cover of the engine for warmth. On board we encountered a Welsh rugby team, while the English wife of a businessman confided that she would probably go and see a Broadway matinee that afternoon to escape the weather.

The rain continued as we disembarked and walked towards Theatreland and Times Square then on to Macy’s. It is unthinkable to visit New York without ascending the Empire State Building but with ‘zero visibility’ we were told to buy the tickets and return next day when the weather just might have cleared up.

When we got to Greenwich Village the towering skyscrapers gave way to brownstone terraces decorated with iron fire escapes. By this time my jacket, supposedly impermeable had allowed the layers underneath to become soaked. We found a bar and had beers, punch-drunk from the bombardment of experiences. We had walked for hours. Revived a little by the Greenwich Brewery ales we headed off to find a subway, going via Christopher Street and discovering a whole shopping area of gay shops, sure enough crossed by ‘Gay Street’. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to peruse the wares and we browsed a couple of stores, innocent displays of ‘sportswear’ in the window and increasingly outrageous as we moved through the shop. We exited, passing one or two intense young men and a somewhat older man sporting a luxuriant wig. At last we located the subway and sank down gratefully to be conveyed all the way back to Westside Studios.

We returned to Times Square for the evening and to find somewhere to eat. Times Square is a magnificent overstatement in neon, surpassing all but Las Vegas in trashy vulgarity and is completely wonderful. The Chinese restaurant we selected must serve nice meals, we imagined, because a number of Chinese were eating there. On requesting beer we were firmly shown the teapot on the table. Our selection of three or four dishes to share was rejected by the waiter. ‘You very hungry?’ he asked. ‘Three is enough!’ This provoked much hilarity, as never before had either of us been told we’d ordered too much food in a restaurant-and of course, New York, like the rest of America enables the diner to bag up uneaten meal portions, ‘to go’.

We dragged ourselves back to the hotel. Tomorrow was the Empire State day…

New York 1997. Part 1.

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In these times where travel is reduced to pedestrian or armchair varieties, Anecdotage posts will not be related to current travel or even to travel plans, as who knows when or where the next journey will be?

But all is not lost, reader, because travel for this writer began long before blogging. And along the way, hand-written travel journals began to accompany the journeys, so it is to these journals that I am turning for inspiration, with a little modern history included.

To provide some back story, this first set of posts concerns a 1997 trip to New York, taken very early in Husband and my relationship-five months in, in fact. That the idea had hatched during one of Husband’s previous dalliances might have been off-putting was something I set on to the back burner, the exciting thought of a visit to such an iconic city proving a more powerful pull than retrospective peevishness.

We began by booking a ‘Flydrive’, meaning to augment the week’s visit by a drive up to Niagara Falls via Boston-a cunning plan, as we thought. In many ways this only serves to demonstrate that detailed planning of trips does not always lead to holiday perfection…

We packed, we grabbed our tickets, we took advantage of a friend’s offer of a lift to Heathrow airport, then we were underway, a brilliant flight taking us in an arc over Canada and offering some spectacular views below. This is something I’ve continued to love about flying, the fascinating bird’s eye landscapes, but while I indulge in this pastime on flights, Husband will always have taken the opportunity to sleep, arriving refreshed and ready for anything, while I will be wiped out and needing an immediate snooze.

Arriving to JFK and getting through we duly found our way to the car hire depot to pick up our vehicle. There it was that we discovered neither of us had thought to bring a driving licence. It was a poignant, wince-making moment. ‘Could my friend fax it through?’ I asked the po-faced staff member, and ‘NO’ was the reply.

Without our own wheels we took a cab into the city and to the room we’d booked at ‘West Side Studios’. The cab cost a hefty slice of our holiday budget, the driver was taciturn and spoke minimal English. Had we been armed with more research we’d have known that the airport is served by a subway straight into the city.

It was late evening and dark by the time we reached the north Manhattan block but having deposited the luggage we gamely struck out into the locale and found a jazz bar where a competent trio were playing live. By this time I was struggling to stay awake and Husband was up for a late evening at the bar. And, remember, we’d not long been an item. There is nothing like travel for discovering compromise.

In the morning we set out to explore Manhattan, using the subway and our feet. My initial misgivings of riding the subway were quickly dispelled. It was safe, clean and easy to use. We were only a few stops from Penn Station so everywhere was accessible. We walked the streets, marvelling at the perpendicular nature of the city and craning our necks.

We’d been recommended a ‘Circle Line’ tour on a ferry that circled Manhattan; a good way to start, except that New York was shrouded in thick fog. It was, nevertheless atmospheric and informative, though cold and damp. We stood by the funnel to catch its warmth.

Meanwhile, as we walked, subwayed and ferried our way around we pondered on one knotty problem. How would we get to visit Boston and Niagara now, without a vehicle?

Pavement Etiquette

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As we know by now, routine is important in our new, scaled-down days. Here at the schloss we rise as always, never early and one of us stumbles down to make tea. Tea is accompanied by the news and the latest round of grim statistics, peppered with small sprinklings of hope and the usual puerile online offerings of entertainment.

I dress for exercise, following my self-imposed regime of Pilates on weekdays, varied by Yoga at weekends. We have coffee. I write, bake, correspond.

After lunch there is gardening or the permitted walk. Walks have taken on a new significance since the arrival of the virus, as the area we may explore has shrunk to our own locality. Though we are near to beaches and harbours and The New Forest National Park, we stick to the streets around our small town, where domestic gardens, concealed pathways, copses and lanes provide the interest.

In one direction lies a cemetery. Given the current situation it may seem a morbid choice for walking, but it is ancient, beautiful and peaceful as well as a treasure trove of historical discovery. I like to read the names on the stones, the ages of the inhabitants of the graves, the touching eulogies. Of course it is a melancholy place, with an area allocated to infants, their tiny plots adorned with toys and memorabilia revealing a universe of pain.

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Inside the cemetery it is easy to avoid others. We can veer off around the paths in any direction we choose.

Outside on the streets, avoidance is a different matter. While a quiet street wit pavements both sides offers plenty of scope for diversion, the narrow pavements on the bridge crossing the river is a virtual minefield, with walkers both sides jostling with joggers and cyclists on the narrow path. At times you get stuck, walking on one side with no escape-then I resort to turning my back, since this is no time to worry about manners.

But we are fortunate, here. We have access to large areas of marsh, or woods, or country lanes and can escape into spacious landscapes with no more than a distant sighting of others.

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And when we do cross over, or pass at a distance there is a small smile, a nod or a greeting, which all mean ‘we are in this together’.

One week later and the cemetery is closed to all except the users, so any of us may get to visit at some point…

The weather is perfect, sunny and spring-like, softening the pain of lock-down for those of us who are not sufferers of the virus or key-workers. We take to the saddle for our first cycle of the year and ride around the quiet lanes where avoidance is relatively easy, although even here there is congestion in places, some understanding the new ‘rules’ and some not.

But as time goes on the neighbourhood becomes quieter, there is increased understanding. What will life be like in the great ‘After? Will we have become institutionalised? Will we continue to creep about and cross the road to avoid others? Or will we gallop, whooping into the streets and fling ourselves at all and sundry? Only time will tell…

The World Shrinks to the Shape of a Day

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How our lives have changed!

In the space of a month we have gone from leading our carefree, ignorant lives, pottering, shopping, taking a train ride, going to the pub, going for a meal, visiting our families, having visitors, going to the cinema or to the theatre, participating in gym classes, getting together with friends or  pursuing our hobbies to leading much smaller lives.

We write lists of jobs.

We clean. We turn out cupboards and sweep the garage. After time, the initial enthusiasm for cleaning begins to pall.

We garden; weeding, mulching, pruning and tidying. I long for the distraction of browsing in a garden centre.

We walk.

We watch TV. We catch up on programmes we missed or dismissed. We try a live-streamed pub quiz. We instigate a ‘movie night’-a leap of faith for Husband, who is film-averse. We watch a favourite, local singer-guitarist broadcasting from his living room.

We video message.

We listen to the news or watch it.

We pursue whichever activities we are still allowed to do.

We are the lucky ones. We have a garden, one that still requires a great deal of work. But the garden centres are closed and we must make do with whatever we can, splitting and dividing plants or moving things around.

We chat over the fence to our neighbours, keeping to our distance rule.

We make the most of our allocated daily walk, the local streets having to replace our favourites like the 12 mile sweep of beautiful Bournemouth Bay or the New Forest national park. We discover interesting or unusual sights over garden walls or in windows, becoming observant, critical or appreciative.

We cross the road in avoidance tactics-are we the only ones to do so? It seems so… We salute walking strangers, smile in acknowledgement of our shared predicament.

I bake things. We eat them. We make creative meals with the ingredients we have, or the odd items we found while cleaning out the cupboard, keeping shopping expeditions to once a week. We take turns to run the gauntlet of the weekly supermarket shop, having taken pains to write a comprehensive list, fearful of having to return before another week passes.

I exercise, using an online Pilates class. I become religious about my Pilates class, performing a morning ritual of moving furniture and rolling out my yoga mat. I grow to like my online, nameless teacher and look forward to her calm, gentle tones instructing me. ‘Well done!’ she says and I almost glow with virtual pride.

We take pleasure in the small things and are grateful for what we have-a comfortable, roomy house, a garden, healthy meals, communications from our family.

We are humbled by the heroism of so many in the face of such a mountainous catastrophe.

And we mourn for lives lost and devastated by this, the abomination of our era.

Returning in Blissful Ignorance…

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Packing for a return journey is different from packing to begin a trip. When you prepare you place your ironed and folded, or rolled clothes neatly into your case. You take care to put shoes into bags; use every small compartment in the space and perhaps, if you are ultra fastidious [I am not], place layers of tissue paper between your pressed garments.

To leave, however you are likely to have more unwashed items than laundered. They may be in a tangled heap in the base of your hotel wardrobe- beachwear, underwear, evening outfits all mingled together in an unsavoury melee. In the case of Husband and myself the unwashed clothes will also be combined.

So rather than layering it into a case with loving care it gets thrust into any crevice available, an un-fragrant mush of sweat-ridden garments to be dealt with later, when you are able to face the chore of unpacking.

Check-out is by midday, although as with any humane hotel there is a room set aside for showering and changing into travel gear as our airport pick up is not until five. Once we’ve breakfasted and packed there’s only time for an hour or two lounging around in the sun before we need to go and ready ourselves. The hotel hosts a different clientele now as the German contingent has left and a Russian influx has taken over.

We’ve been allocated a swisher room than ours for showering and changing-a small suite with a private plunge pool, but it’s stuffy inside the tall fence and I’m not envious. With half and hour or so to kill we wander across the road to our nearest bar and have a beer before our taxi rolls up to take us for the first leg of our return.

It’s back to Koh Samui’s beautiful airport. Check-in is easy this time, although there’s very little here to while away the long wait in departure. At this point we feel no need to don masks as thus far there is no virus on the island. In departure there is a kiosk with gratis snacks and cold drinks-a delightful touch.

I spot a staff member strolling around with a placard and notice that it bears our name. Horrors! Husband’s case has something undesirable inside it. He is whisked away to oust the offending item, leaving me wondering if I’ll see him again. Eventually he returns, having retrieved a cigarette lighter he’d inadvertently packed. We’d bought it to light the mosquito coil on our balcony. I suppress the shame I feel more than he exhibits and we board the plane, where there is barely time for the mini-meal before we are touching down at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport again.

This time we take care to wear our masks and use our gel as we navigate along the extensive arms of the hub. It is midnight. The flight to the UK, we discover, is delayed.

At once the idea of 13 cramped hours feels unacceptable so we make our way to the Thai Airways desk, and in a reckless rush we upgrade our seats to Business Class-an eye-watering sum. Will we be seated together? The masked check-in lady tells us that we will be able to see one another but not seated side-by-side; a description that I do not fully understand until we board the plane.

Now we can use the business class lounge and although it takes several miles of airport wandering to locate it, when we do we can sink into comfortable chairs, help ourselves to a banquet consisting of every possible comestible and quaff an unending supply of drinks. It is hard to resist the urge to binge but tiredness craves calories!

Then it’s down to the gate and at last to the plane-accessed by a privileged short cut. We find ourselves on the upper floor of this gargantuan, winged behemoth.

There is our accommodation. They are not so much seats as nests. Compact pods furnished with screens, trays and best of all-buttons that stretch the seat into a fully reclining bed. Heaven in a cabin seat!

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Husband’s pod lies just over the low screen, so I can wave and smile at him. As I’m getting settled a masked cabin steward lady approaches with a tray bearing orange juice or [wait for it] champagne. She addresses me by name and hands me a menu. It is all overwhelming. I’m not hungry but feel obliged to consume the meal I’ve chosen, accessorised with real crockery and cutlery.

I attempt to watch a film but have watched all I wanted to see on the outward flight, also I am exhausted and seduced by the comfort of the stretch, the place to lift my feet. I press the buttons, snuggle in the blanket and sleep.

We touch down at Heathrow. It is cold, dank and indecently early.

How ignorant we were, then, of what was to come!

Venturing Further Afield

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With just three days to go we wake to overcast skies and decide that this is the day we can venture out to see some sights. Outside the hotel we negotiate a price with the taxi driver who spends his time there and set off down the busy road parallel to Lamai Beach, first to see the Grandma and Grandad rocks. After a slow ride through the traffic the driver makes an abrupt turn left down a narrow, bumpy lane, winds between some buildings and comes to a halt in a car park behind a welter of assorted stalls and shops-their number somewhat out of proportion with the numbers of sight-seers around.

Our driver indicates the way we should go-a passageway through a shop piled high with hats and gaudy toys. The character of the beach here is changed from wide sweep of sand to cliffs and prominent rocks-none more prominent than the ‘Grandad’. And it is immediately obvious how the rock acquired its name.

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We clamber up to see the rocks from different angles then return to the taxi. The driver has brought a companion along for the ride, although we are not sure who she is-his wife, perhaps?

Next we wind up into the interior of Koh Samui to stop at a temple complex and I’m glad I thought to fling a thin sarong into my bag to aid modest dressing for temple visits.

Inside a gilded, glass case adorned with offerings and flowers sits the ‘mummified monk’, a disquieting exhibit, his sightless eyes staring out of his leathery face.

Leaving the main road we drive up through lush plantations of banana trees and orchards of rubber trees, each trunk circled with a band and a small cup for the trees’ sap to drain into. Then it’s on and up again until we reach a rutted track and pull into a parking area bordered by a fence. Behind the fence are elephants, prepared and ready to take tourists for rides through the forest. A stall sells bananas for the punters to feed them and there is a charge to photograph these exploited animals. We know that many elephants that work in this way are ill-treated and we have not come to see them, but to look at the waterfall.

While it is not exactly a raging tumult, the waterfall is impressive enough and surrounded by immense, tall trees. It is not seething with tourists but those that are there are either bathing in the pool or draping themselves in the path of my camera shutter. And I can imagine how different it will be when the rainy season is underway. In comparison to the Grandma and Granddad rocks the number of stalls on the path is restrained, consisting mainly of piled up coconuts and a few souvenirs.

Our driver and his silent companion are [justifiably] not much inclined to act as tour guides, dropping us at each location and waiting for us to return, although our questions are answered and our expressions of appreciation acknowledged.

We return down the track and head towards another beach area. Here is an impressive shrine and another [enormous] glass case containing a vessel and what appears to be another mummified monk-this one even more spooky, peering out at us with sinister stare. The vessel in which he sits is itself surrounded by dozens of model boats.

The beach here is stacked with the hard, white shapes of dead coral, beautiful but a telltale sign of poor sea health. But the area is almost deserted, the shrine showing signs of neglect. Clearly this is not a well-known site.

We have one last site to visit, a temple complex that quickly becomes my favourite The entire venue is snake themed, the temple walls adorned with vibrant scenes rendered in terracotta and best of all, outside, a long staircase leading to the beach is flanked by beautiful cobras, their mouths gaping as they reach the base as if to snatch the unwary person descending.

It’s the end of our whistlestop tour, but we’ve discovered there is much more to Koh Samui than beach life.

Hot on the Tourist Trail

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While it is too hot to do much during the daytime, we feel obliged to take a few excursions, so an evening trip out to Bhoput, an alleged ‘fishing village’ seems manageable.

It is clear when we arrive that ‘fishing village’ is not such an accurate description for Bhoput, whose lanes are not only teeming with tourists but lined both sides of each and every street with stalls selling every kind of touristy object imaginable [plus many unimaginable items]. Amongst all of this rampant commerce there is little sign of the historic buildings and character we were promised, but we are not unhappy, since the broad sweep of bay is beautiful and the many restaurants offer a mouth-watering range of fish and seafood dishes, which is what we are after.

Towards the end of a food stall street, where stallholders are fanning their wares to ward off flies, an open air bar beckons. It’s flanked by a beautiful shrine adorned with shrubs and flowers.

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Shrines are everywhere-and sometimes in the middle of nowhere. Along one country lane many of them have ladders leading up to the platform and I’m curious as to why. Perhaps it’s ease of access? They are also decked with offerings-drinks, objects, flowers and food items

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Of course amongst the food stalls there are the customary deep-fried insects.

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While this may well be the future of protein for world nutrition we’re not tempted to snack on crunchy crustacea right this moment. Instead we peruse the plethora of fish and seafood restaurants that overlook the bay and I remember that it is, in fact Valentine’s Day. So as we settle into a table with a view over the sea, tables are filling up along the beach, too.

We choose a seafood starter to share, the calamari soft and not at all chewy [as it mostly is] then grilled fish with salad and corn. The sky grows dark as a boat with red sails glides out to sea, lit up, a Valentine’s party perhaps?

We decide we’ve probably done Bhoput and go to meet our taxi.

A walk around the backstreets of our area takes us through more market stalls and then we stumble upon a large Tesco department store. We’ve seen plenty of ‘Tesco Lotus Express’ outlets but this is the first large store we’ve spotted. Intrigued, we go inside [we’re still after coffee-making equipment after all]. In the entrance there are smaller shops with gifts and a lurid play area.

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The store is familiar and yet strange, but after an extensive search we find a coffee filter. It is disorientating to wander a supermarket that is so well-known to us at home and see the range of products so unfamiliar to us, like stepping into the bathtub and finding it full of Cherryade.

On the return we stop to look at the local temple, modestly situated on a corner at the top of town and a kind of oasis away from the teeming streets. We have yet to look at any more of Koh Samui but the weather feels too hot for traipsing around. There are, however a few days left before we return…

 

 

 

Lamai and Food Heaven

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The road that runs parallel to Lamai Beach passes the front of our hotel and teems with all kinds of traffic, from endless convoys of scooters to chugging, motorised kitchens, their driver negotiating the twists and turns while a bubbling vat of something delicious sizzles away next to them. While the traffic is not fast, it’s difficult to cross over without the help of the security guard.

All we can manage, having limited our daytime sleep to two and a half hours in order to try and adjust to Thailand time is to stroll across to the small bar and restaurant facing the hotel. Here we can sit upstairs in summer clothing on an open balcony and watch the world go by in all its fascinating variety while we sip a Chang beer and enjoy the balmy warmth-a novelty for us, coming from our UK winter.

We peruse the menu. I’m confident that here in Thailand I can find a variety of benign meals to suit my very contrary constitution, which eschews spicy things. And I do. Thai food is choc-a-bloc with stir fried vegetables, delicate rice and noodle dishes and fresh, delicious seafood. So I plump for fat prawns and broccoli with fried rice. In the unaccustomed heat a selection of a few, modestly proportioned dishes is perfect.

It’s all we need for today and having managed to stay up past ten we retire early, hoping to sleep all night. The room is spacious, though gloomy. We are unable to fathom the workings of the coffee machine and will need water and non-dairy milk so a foray into the mini supermarket along the road will be necessary tomorrow.

The day dawns hot [35 degrees], blistering as we make our way to breakfast, which offers every possible need or desire, including, miraculously, soya milk!

And while it’s too hot to do much, other than loll about in the shade, reading, Lamai Beach stretches in a sandy curve fringed with coconut palms, a steady breeze mitigating the searing heat.

The mini-market is a treasure trove for oat milk, beers and water but yields no coffee-making equipment, not so much as a pack of filters. We step across to the coffee bar across the street instead, where air conditioned comfort and some creditable pastries are available.

The evening temperatures are perfect and a short walk across a bridge takes us to an open market square where an abundance of food stalls provides an evening meal, and a lively bar with a music stage provides the entertainment-a competent covers band with a charismatic girl singer. We can sit in the open eating freshly grilled kebabs and sipping from a delicate coconut then enjoy some stomping music. How much better does it get than this?

A Long Journey to the Sun

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Winter sun. The post-Christmas adverts are full of it, and as the UK drowns once again in a deluge of depressing damp, these old bones itch with a longing for hard, brittle, hot sun to dry them out.

We leave our house at lunchtime, taking one last look at the flood lake that covers the water meadows behind our house and head off to get the airport coach. Health issues preclude early morning starts for me and these days we overnight at an airport hotel; this time it’s the Hilton, being the only hotel with easy access to Heathrow terminal 2. It’s fine except that, as is usual in chain hotels the room is over-hot with no fathomable means to turn down the temperature. After I’ve removed the too-plump duvet from its cover we finally get to sleep.

We’ve decided to get out of our winter sun rut and swap the West Indies for Thailand, having not been for some years. The flight is long to Bangkok and followed by another, domestic flight but perhaps some passengers will have cancelled due to the sudden, rampant appearance of ‘Coronavirus’ that is running riot in China; in truth we’ve vacillated, considered aborting the trip, although since there’s no advice from the foreign office for Thailand, no money would be refunded were we to cancel.

We’re armed with face masks and hand gel for the journey. There’s more than enough time for a coffee and to tug on my flight socks for the 11 hours to come.

Thailand is 7 hours ahead of us so there’s some darkness as we travel forward in time to Bangkok. I am happy enough to while the hours catching up on films I’ve missed, watching three movies in a row, meanwhile there’s a reasonable meal and later a snack.

At last the Thai Airways plane touches down at Bangkok and there is that unfamiliar bombardment of warmth/fumes/humidity as we exit, stretching our legs for the long, long trek through Suvarnabhumi Airport, which must have some of the longest airport walks, endless tubes to get to check-ins, desks, bag-drops, international, domestic, immigration and the rest.

Here we don our masks, stifling in the unaccustomed warmth and join the collected mass of bodies queueing to get our fingerprints scanned, our passports scrutinised and our photos taken. There are ‘health check’ points, though not for us and more than half the fellow-travellers are sporting masks, as are we. The wait is long, hot and airless.

Despite our continued route through on to a domestic flight we must undergo more security before we are allowed into the gate area for the flight to Koh Samui. I’m alarmed when our water is discarded and subsequently discover that no water is available to purchase at the gate. I’m starting to feel thirsty and get the ominous, prickly feeling that precedes cystitis. There is no option except to fill a bottle from the fountain, an unknown. I decide to take the risk. and while it tastes rank it’s better than dehydration.

There is not much more than an hour to Koh Samui and when we arrive we step out into a green, flower-filled oasis, the airport buildings airy, open-sided huts. This is reputedly the ‘world’s most beautiful airport’ and I’m not about to dispute it.

In the taxi to our hotel I gaze out, somewhat stupefied by lack of sleep, though grateful for the air-conditioned cab. By now we’ve been up for 17 hours and have yet to acclimatise to the fierce temperature.

At hotel check-in all I can do is nod wearily and sign things, before we stumble to our room and fall into bed.

We are here…

A Day to Remember…

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Today’s post is a short fiction, due to my being out of the country for a couple of weeks. I hope it breaches the hiatus…

A Day to Remember
It was rare for Shirley and Brian to visit London these days, but it was a special birthday for Shirley, who’d expressed a desire to see ‘Phantom’ and managed to drag Brian along this time; Brian, who was not fond of shows and would have preferred to have visited the museums or Kew Gardens.
Deciding to make the most of their day, the couple bought a newspaper for him and a magazine for her before settling themselves into a seat with a table on the train, where on glancing at the headline on the front of his paper, Brian read, ‘World Summit to be Hit by Protest’. He frowned.
“Looks like we’ve chosen a bad day to visit. There’s to be some sort of demonstration. Let’s hope the transport system isn’t affected.”
Shirley looked up from the article she was reading about William and Kate’s likely choice of baby names.
“Well I don’t suppose they’ll be going where we’re going, will they? They’ll all go to Trafalgar Square, or wherever it is they gather up for these protests, not Oxford Street shops and the theatres.”
While they had coffee, Brian studied his map of the London Underground. As he was so much more adept at finding his way around than she, Shirley left all the navigating to her husband, who prided himself on his ability to understand maps and directions. He’d been persuaded to further indulge his wife by accompanying her to various department stores, despite his innate aversion to such establishments, although he harboured a secret hope that she would not want to linger too long in Selfridges, John Lewis and Debenhams.
“What exactly is it you want to buy?” he’d asked her, prior to setting off, but her motives had been as unfocused as usual.
“Oh nothing special,” she’d told him. “I just want to look.”
He’d kept his exasperation in check, owing to the celebratory nature of the occasion, but nevertheless the next couple of hours until lunch stretched ahead like a wide yawn; a boredom endurance test when he’d be trailing around after her while she flitted from one display to another in a kind of random exploration of merchandise.
A successful negotiation of the tube saw them surface at Oxford Circus, where throngs of purposeful pedestrians surrounded them, buffeting them as they stood to get their bearings. Shirley’s face bore a momentary, wide-eyed look of panic.
“Brian, we must have got mixed up in the Summit protest!”
“No love. It’s just busy. It’s always like this. You haven’t been up here for a few years.”
He took her arm and propelled her in the direction of John Lewis, holding tight to her elbow while they tackled the barrage of oncoming pedestrian traffic that surged towards them like a tidal wave. Having gained the sanctuary of the store, Shirley appeared to rally and Brian was obliged to follow in her wake as she floor-hopped her way from bedding to kitchenware, from toys to lingerie.
At one thirty, by which time Brian’s stomach was growling starvation warnings, they decided to look for a lunch venue, choosing to walk up Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus on the grounds that it was quieter and easier to travel along, besides which there would be a more salubrious selection of restaurants and cafes around Wardour Street and Leicester Square, where the theatre crowds were catered for.
There was a slight altercation at Piccadilly Circus. Brian favoured a pie and a pint in the dark, gloomy and comfortable, olde worlde interior of The Captain’s Cabin, whereas Shirley hankered after the more opulent and upmarket decor of The Criterion. It was while they stood on the steps under the statue of Eros in a dither of procrastination that the young man approached them, gesturing towards the London Underground map that Brian clutched in his hand.
“Excuse me, but could I borrow your map a moment?” he said.
Shirley looked him up and down in a rapid appraisal, taking in his dark eyes, his neat, dark hair, his pale grey tee shirt with a surfing logo and the dark blue rucksack slung over one shoulder. He must be a student, she decided, perhaps he was doing some travelling before taking up a college place. She smiled encouragement, thinking of their own son, James, who’d taken a gap year to Australia a few years ago. Beside her she could see Brian’s shoulders straightening in preparation for the directions he was about to give the young man.
“Where are you trying to get to?” he asked him
“I’m heading for Trafalgar Square.”
The student’s face was inscrutable, like the Mona Lisa in that painting. Shirley and Brian had been to Paris last spring and visited The Louvre.
“Was it the National Gallery you wanted? It might not be the best day, you know. There’s a big demonstration going on there today; huge crowds. Tomorrow could be better!”
A small, tolerant smile tweaked the corner of his lips.
“Please,” he said, holding out his hand for the map. Brian kept hold of it, leaning towards the young man and pointing.
“We are here, Piccadilly Circus. You go down and take the Bakerloo Line to Charing Cross. That’ll be your nearest to Trafalgar Square. OK?”
“Thank you.”
He turned and they watched as he crossed the road and disappeared down into the subway.
Forty minutes later the pair was seated at a table in The Captain’s Cabin when they heard the sound, and followed others out on to the pavement to look for a cause. After a few moments it was followed by the disquieting shriek of sirens as the emergency vehicles forged their way through the streets. A stricken look passed between the two.

Next morning they switched on the television news to see an image they recognised. It was the unmistakeable face of the lovely young man. Hussein Omar, he was called; the suicide bomber of Trafalgar Square.

Next week-Eastern travel tales…