After a slightly longer than comfortable silence, Uncle Harold finally said, “I suppose it can't hurt if I take her to the city to have a look.” Lest Aunt Alberta object to such an ill-use of her husband's time, Susan quickly replied, “That's okay Harold, I don't mind going down there by myself. I'll take the... coach.” She had been about to say “train”, when she remembered that she had vowed never to take a train ride again. ~ My Susan Fic.
At the beginning of this year, before University went back, GeoffreyF from The Lion's Call, encouraged me to write a fanfiction, something I'd never done before, although I'd had something of a plot for one in my head for about five years. It's the story of what happens to Susan Pevensie after her siblings and other family members are killed in a train crash in The Last Battle, the last of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. I'm still working on the story and will probably be doing so for a long time. When I was starting out, I asked Narnian Steward (another guy from TLC; as you can gather we don't use our real names on the site) for some help on the intro, since he lives in England. I wanted to know how I could have Susan travel from Cambridge, where she was staying with her aunt and uncle (Eustace's parents, if you know the stories) to London. I didn't want her taking a train, since her family had died because of one, so he suggested I have her take the coach (British word for inter-city bus) to Victoria Station, which would be near enough to Scotland Yard which was where I needed her to go.
I never guessed that 11 months later I would be taking an almost identical trip - a coach ride from Oxford to Victoria Station, London. While I had by the time I was writing thing applied for Oxford, I was still unsure as to whether I'd get a scholarship and I certainly hadn't thought this far ahead. In fact, the only reason I chose a coach ride to London the train is that it was cheaper.
The Oxford Tube is a coach service specifically for taking passengers from Oxford to Victoria, London. I'd heard that it wasn't particularly good, just cheap, and it was certainly the cheapest way to London I could find, with a special discount for students. You can imagine my surprise then, to find that it was very comfortable inside (more so than the normal intra-city buses) and had seatbelts, reading lights and free wireless internet access.
Okay, so my trip was probably a little more comfortable than Susan's, but the similarities were still striking. I'm grateful, however that my trip to London was under much happier circumstances than hers (to spend Christmas with the Dockseys, a family known to Pamela Thabethe, from her stay in England), and I can certainly say that the girl I would be staying with, Sarah Docksey, turned out to be a much better friend than Susan's host, Margaret, in my story.
The coach ride took about 2 hours. I slept through part of it, but awoke to catch my first sight of London. When we arrived at our final stop I was a little confused because they said it was the "Victoria Train Station" but we were actually a block away from the station, and I wandered around for a while, consulting a map on the street corner, before figuring out which direction to go in. I was to catch a train from the station to Hackbridge. When I got the the station, I was grateful that I'd had to catch a train back to Oxford from Hungerford earlier that week, because at least I now knew how to book a ticket. The ticket is valid for the day, so I decided to get myself some lunch before working out when the next train would be leaving and stressing myself out. On the way to an M&S food shop, from which I knew I could get a sandwich and cooldrink, I discovered that the station had a South African Shop which sells South African products. I got my lunch from M&S and then had the brainstorm of getting a box of Ouma rusks for the Dockseys as a Christmas/thank-you present. It turned out to be a good plan, though they were slightly confused as to when and how to eat them. You dunk them in tea!
Once I had eaten my lunch, I had a look at the trains. It took me a while to figure out which train was stopping at Hackbridge, but I found it at last. There was no platform number up yet and I discovered they only put them up shortly before the train leaves. It would be a while, so I found somewhere to sit and ate my lunch. At last the number went up. When I got to the ticket barrier, I didn't know what to do with my ticket. At the Oxford station you only insert your ticket when you arrive and I was afraid that if I put my ticket in the slot, it would swallow it and I'd have no ticket. There was no one around interested in helping me. Eventually I took the chance and inserted my ticket which was immediately spat out again, the other side. I'd been worrying for nothing. When I got to the platform, I wasn't sure which coaches to get into. The first man I asked was useless, the second told me to go to the further coaches, where the light was. By the time I'd understood his answer those coaches pulled, away leaving the closer ones (which I would have got into) behind. I'd missed the train.
No matter, I could still catch the next one, though it was a little difficult getting out of the platform area back into the main station without losing my ticket. I convinced someone let me out and had to wait another half hour till the next train. I decided to buy myself a Creme Soda from the South African shop to console myself while I waited. For some odd reason they weren't selling Bar-Ones or I'd have bought one too.
For the next train I was ready and waiting for the platform number to go up, so I could get to it as soon as possible. There must have been a problem with the line though, because they skipped my train when then numbers went up and went on to the next. I could tell that there was a number of other people around me waiting for the same train. At last, the number went up. It was platform 15, but the area we were in was for trains leaving from platforms 1-12. Clearly there was something wrong with the normal platform.
The people around me whom I had sensed were waiting, all started moving to the other side of the station where platform 15 was. If not for them, I wouldn't have known where to go and would have missed the next train too. Thankfully I got there in good time.
While I was on the train, I got a message from Sarah saying to get off at the Mitcham Junction rather than the Hackbridge station. They are similarly close to her house, but at Hackbridge I would get out on the wrong side of the track and have to drag my luggage across a footbridge. That should have been no problem. There were two stations with the name "Mitcham" on the trip, Mitcham East, and Micham Junction. I knew I needed to get off at the second one, but when we arrived, the rolling signboard on the train still said Mitcham East. By the time I was sure this was my stop, had gotten up and unjammed my case that didn't want to roll properly, the train doors were closing and we were on the way to the next station, Hackbridge. So I had to send a message to Sarah saying to fetch me from there and had to drag my case over the footbridge. Not fun dragging a 60 litre wheelie case up and down stairs, but I somehow managed. Sarah arrived soon afterwards and we were safe on our way to her house. It had been an eventful and long day, but I had made it. I was in London :-)
*****
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| Yes, I was a little scared |
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| 10 Downing Street |
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| Big Ben |
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| Westminster Abbey |
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| The other Nelson |
After that we took the tube to Covent Gardens because a friend of Sarah's had said it had lovely decorations. Unfortunately, by now most of the shops were closed, but we did get to see the decorations which consisted mainly of baubles and giant disco balls which created an incredible lighting effect. We watched a street artist doing a performance which culminated in him juggling a soft ball, a machete and a chainsaw (which was switched on).
******
On Monday, Sarah was going to take me to one of the palaces, but both the ones she had in mind were closed for boxing day. As was Harrods (so much for the Boxing Day sale at Harrods) so we went to the BlueWater shopping centre instead. It was rather busy, but not too bad considering it was Boxing Day. I think we missed the craziest shoppers in the morning rush. I had my first proper takeaway fish and chips since coming to England (they're kind of hard to find in Oxford). We had supper with Sarah's aunt and uncle and cousins.
On Tuesday morning I packed to return to Oxford. Sarah and I watched a DVD (Emma) and after lunch I made my way to the station. I had planned to take the train leaving just after 1, but lunch was running a bit late so we got there just in time for the next train. While I was buying my ticket, an announcement came over the intercom that the train was cancelled because police were attending to an incident on the previous train (the one I was originally wanting to take). I don't know what the "incident" was, but I thank the Lord I wasn't on it. I had to wait for the next train, but I didn't mind. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I slept on most of the coach ride home and got back to Oxford just before 6 pm.
*****
PS. Yes, this post has been a long time coming (I feel like I've been working on it for ages, so forgive any typos, I'm tired of proof-reading it). I have even more photos from my trip which you can look at here:
