As I write this, the bus that I’m supposed to be on is en route to Prague. It will arrive there in two hours. Rather than on that coach, I am propped up in bed, writing a blog. Here’s how that happened.
Friday dawned grey but bright, or I assume that it did as I failed to properly set my alarm and woke up at 9:30. I had intended to be up early, to better pack my things and tidy my desk, but I didn’t mind oversleeping so much. Padma, Lauren and I had breakfast together, as we were expecting Friday morning to be our last time together for several days. This went fine, and so did printing my coach tickets and a map of Prague from the library. I packed and tidied and was ready to go in plenty of time to pick up some snacks from the school shop before catching a bus that was theoretically supposed to drop me at Broadmead in reasonable advance of my 1:45 departure. This is not what happened.
What happened is that traffic on Gloucester Road was ridiculous for no apparent reason. Several cars did stupid things in front of my bus driver, who took it upon himself to attempt to correct their behaviour. He would stop, open his door and holler at the drivers, engaging them in unpleasant, expletive-strewn conversation. As a result, we sat through at least three unnecessary traffic lights on top of the queues of vehicles moving approximately 7 miles per hour.
I ran through Broadmead and across St. James Park only to find that I had missed my coach by four minutes. I called Lauren to check for a train that would arrive in time to make my coach to the continent at 5, and I leapt into the queue for coach tickets for some information on available journeys. After standing in the queue for fifteen minutes, I was told that the next coach would leave at 2:15, arriving a scant ten minutes before my coach to Prague was supposed to leave. Should I chance it? I deliberated a few seconds and stepped out of the queue to call Lauren for train information.
According to her research, there was one leaving at 2:30 set to arrive at 4:46, but I remembered from our trip to London that the Victoria Train Station is four blocks from Victoria Coach Station. Also, in order to catch the train I’d have to run several blocks to Bristol Temple Meads and purchase a ticket. Given these options, I decided that it would be better at least to arrive in the coach station, even with the shorter turnaround. This decision had taken perhaps 3 minutes, max, but by the time I returned to the ticket queue, it was back to length it had been when I first stepped into it.
I waited anxiously as several people who had absolutely no idea what they wanted to do talked to the two ticket agents working the desk. I watched the 2:15 coach to London pull up and begin boarding, and I was finally forced to ask someone ahead of me to let me jump the queue in order to make it. She graciously allowed this once she understood my situation, and I got a ticket as quickly as I could. I was the last person onto the coach, but I made it. I sat down, and began to pray. (And to knit. The herringbone scarf is going very well.)
We were flying along for the first hour, but our speed soon began to drop, regardless of the fact that traffic was still moderate to light. As we got father toward London, traffic became denser, and by the time we got the Cheswick, it had reached the point of stop-and-go. There were loads of pedestrians all mashing the crosswalk buttons, and stacks and stacks of taxis clogging up the bus lanes. I watched the clock over the driver’s head as it counted 16:57... 16:58... 16:59...
We pulled into Victoria Station as the clock turned 17:00. I shot off of the bus, through the arrivals terminal and across the street (narrowly avoiding a taxi) into the departures terminal. The first fellow I saw told me that Service 192 was leaving from Platform 18, and I sprinted the length of the terminal to Platform 18...
No bus. The helpful people at the Eurolines desk informed me that I’d missed it by two minutes. Because my ticket from Bristol and my ticket to Prague were separate and therefore not planned by the company to connect, policy dictated that they couldn’t refund anything, and additionally, my ticket to the continent was a funfare (non-refundable, cheaper) ticket with nho connection. Because the journey involved no tconnection, there was therefore no w ay to send me to Prague. Tthey directed me to the ticket desk on the other side of the terminal for further information.
At the ticket desk,a I was informed that the next coach to Prague is Sunday night and that there’s nothing I can do before then. I called Lauren to ask if perhaps there were trains I could catch from Victoria, and she and Padma very kindly headed to the library to perform some research. I was upset about all of this for maybe ten minutes while I sat there, but then I decided that really it would be easier and more pleasant to just laugh at the ridiculousness of my entire day. I pulled out my knitting again. Lauren called me back to say that the farthest she could get me was Brussels, so I hopped back into the ticket queue for a coach home. The very sympathetic woman to whom I next spoke informed me that the next coach to Bristol left at 6, which was seven minutes from the time that I stepped up. After that, Megabus was departing at 9. Could I make the 8? I wanted to know. “If you run,” said the ticket lady.
I decided that I had had enough of arriving at platforms to see NO BUS, so I chose the 9 o’clock. It turned out, of course, that the 6 o’clock was late departing, so I could have made it, but no matter. I got some yogurt and a bottle of water, and I sat down to knit some more. In the time that I sat there, I got four rows done, I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas on my iPod, I texted back and forth to Tamsin, I spoke to Liz and I made plans with Lauren and Padma to proceed with a movie night upon my unexpected return. In the time that I wasn’t doing any of those other things, I observed the station population.
The station was full, for some reason, of little children all in varying states of distress. One in particular was very frightened of pigeons, and would cry whenever one took flight. I feel I should mention that the white pigeon we’d seen in the terminal three weeks ago was there. At least, I assume it was our white pigeon. I haven’t seen many around. The number of people standing around rose and fell very rhythmically, peaking at the top of every hour. The buses seemed to be running fairly on schedule until about 8, at which time things fell pretty much to pieces. Platforms kept getting switched around, nobody knew where they were supposed to be...
As I had prepared myself to expect, 9 o’clock came and went, and all they announced was that the Megabus service was “delayed,” reason unknown, no expected arrival given. Two Megabuses pulled up at 9:35, but only the one to Birmingham took any passengers, which was confusing to everyone who had queued up. A bus to Cardiff also departed around that time, and since the service I was taking would also be stopping at Cardiff, several people went over thinking it was ours and had to be sent back. We finally boarded at 5 minutes to 10, an hour late. We didn’t start moving until 10 after 10, at which point the driver explained that he had been delayed because the wind had been blowing heavily since mid-afternoon, and that buses were only permitted to go 45 miles per hour under those conditions. This boded well, I thought.
I got a seat to myself for this journey, though I kept my bag in my lap so I’d have something over which to slump. From that position I eavesdropped on the conversation of the people in front of me, which was in French. There were four of them, students from France, and they’d never been through London before, nor had they ever heard of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was lit up when we passed it. We also passed a skating rink, lit purple, and the Natural History Museum, lit in green. Many of the shops had gone all out with their window displays for Christmas, particularly Harrod’s which was just ridiculous.
It started to rain again outside of London, but the wind dropped some and we went what seemed to me to be a reasonable speed. We pulled into UWE at a quarter after midnight. (One of the major advantages of taking Megabus over National Express is that Megabus stops at UWE, requiring no additional bus or cab to get home.) I called Lauren as she’d requested to let her know I was home, and after stopping at my room to pick up a DVD and to run a comb through my hoodie hair, I walked over to Mendip Court and knocked on Lauren’s door.
I discovered upon entering Lauren’s kitchen that the entire time I was sitting in London, Lauren and Padma had been preparing a party. It had occurred to them that if I’d managed to catch the proper coach, by 1 in the morning I’d have been somewhere in the middle of Europe - Paris, maybe, and since I couldn’t be in Paris, they brought Paris to me. They spent the evening making French-themed food, served with French wine and accompanied by all the French music that Lauren had on her computer. There were balloons and fancy dishware and a gold tablecloth sprinkled with star confetti. It was awesome. And the food was delicious! I am so lucky to have these thoughtful, talented friends.
It turns out that I wasn’t the only one with rotten fortune on Friday. Lauren, thinking that her lab was at 2:30 got ready for class at 2:15. She stopped to check what classroom she’d be in only to discover that class had started at 1:30. Oops. We toasted to a better Saturday the Fourteenth, which, as I pointed out, it clearly already was. Padma has an excursion to Oxford today, after which he and Lauren are performing a concert with Showstoppers. Due to the fact that I am not in Prague, I will get to see it. That was the only part of this weekend I was sad to be missing, so it works out in the end.
By the time we finished our crepes and Nutella, we were all far too tired to consider watching a three-hour Bollywood movie, so we’re saving that for tonight. In the meantime, I’m going to get a jump on the coursework that I would otherwise not be doing. Better luck next time...
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