Carriage B, Delayed 16.05 to London Paddington. 18.07.
No adventure ever worth setting out on ever started easily. That’s what I’m telling myself as I lug all of this junk across country. I have to face the facts. It was my decision to maximise my time in Chile, leaving a single day’s pit stop in the UK before setting out again for Greece. Both occasions require formal wear, but Chile is in the grip of deepest winter and Greece will be just past the zenith of its summer fury. It felt decidedly odd packing my quilted coat, gloves and rain gear when the temperature was ticking past 31°C outside, but I have to be prepared for any eventuality. I really dislike traveling with anything more than a few changes of clothes and a backpack, but on this occasion I have no choice. Thankfully, I don’t have to lug my Greek summer wear around Chile. It’s just getting all of this junk out of Somerset that’s the kicker.
It’s pretty hot out there. The corridor is full of suitcases and a pram, most of them belonging to a retiree in a summer dress. I wondered at first whether she was a candidate for the most inattentive grandmother on the planet, since she only popped out into the corridor to check on the inhabitant of the pram twice over the space of an hour – until at last she scooped up the little thing, which turned out to be a little brown puppy. She proceeded to try to encourage it to drink from a metal bowl of water – most of which went onto her dress and the floor – and then took it into the toilet cubicle, picking up super absorbent puppy training wipes from her pram en route. The Japanese family trapped in the corridor with me seemed more than a little bemused.
We were delayed again outside Castle Cary by a fire at the side of the track, which appeared to have started some five or ten minutes ago, judging by the speed of its advance and the trail of charred grass it had left in its wake.
Fires starting at the side of railway lines? Two heatwaves back to back? I’ve never known a summer like it. The sooner I am up in the air and down in the southern hemisphere, the better. I may have Spanish blood, but on this occasion the Englishman in me wins out. I’m really not a fan of this kind of heat.
24.03.
Check-in is officially open, but the website is telling me it’s “too early” to check in, despite the fact that this time tomorrow I’ll be one hour into my fourteen-and-a-half hour flight to Santiago. It’ll be something to do with the fact that it’s British Airways operating the flight out, not Iberia, and Iberia’s website usually forces me to input my middle names as part of my surname, since middle names don’t exist in Spanish society (but two surnames are expected). One of those two usual stumbling blocks.
I’m too tired to deal with it now. I’ve packed a proper headrest cushion for the journey, as it will be the longest flight I have ever been on in my life, so if I have to check in at the airport and get a rum deal as seats go, I guess them’s the breaks. At least I have Friday and Saturday to readjust! BB x
The Book of Barnabas 