Travel, Trains and Teeny-Tiny (Uni) Towns

Travel, Trains and Teeny-Tiny Towns

A Rather Long Post About How A Book Made Me Realise I Love Trains, Visiting Small Towns And Referencing The Thirteenth King Who Can Time Travel. 

Settle in for this one. Make yourself comfortable. Set the scene - with a girl dressed for winter on your average East Coast Train, crappy biro in her hand and a little notebook full of incomplete anagram circles. 

The last few weeks I feel like I started to explore this lovely land I call home. I've been hopping on and off trains: to St Andrews, Glasgow, Durham - and realised how much I enjoy it. Similarly, I've also begun to noticed that those teeny-tiny towns (or itty-bitty-city in the case of Durham) have a delicious appeal. A fortnight past, I stepped off at Leuchars having meandered down the coast from Edinburgh, thrilled to visit Charlie and his incredibly wee kittens. Yesterday, I jumped out of the carriage onto the platform and gazed down the lush verdant hill across to Durham's Cathedral before, with a grin and the sun on my face, ambling into town. Both Saturdays were glorious. Bursting sunshine winked down from the sky with a bright, cold eye and the buzz of being somewhere new made me shiver with delight. There I stood, in the role of stranger, ready to see someone else's haunts and havens. 

As I mentioned, Charlie met me at the bus stop when I popped up to St Andrews but when I went to Durham it was to see my sister settled into her new room in Hatfield College's Rectory, so in this latter case I was meeting my family. Now, both of these places are home to world-renowned universities, hugely successful and prestigious colleges for some of the best and brightest students. Both are also ancient - buildings in both areas range from the medieval to Norman, histories going back even further. In terms of universities, St Andrews is much older, but that hardly detracts from how we should view Durham. Town and university merge in their respective centres and the both have that slightly odd feeling of locals vs students. 

But now, having been at Carolina for a year, I don't look at either place with the scorn or derision that used to curl my lips at the mention of small university campuses. Muttering judgementally, I'd make comments like 'they're just like school', or 'they're too bubble-like and insular' or 'they're full of the same people' - I imagined everyone decked out in Jack Wills and signing off (as one girl actually did on my sister's facebook) "#Durham #YAH". Well, I think I can safely say that I am an idiot and am very glad that UNC has opened my eyes. Squirrel.

It meant that whilst wandering in my happy daze alongside the nattering Mr Wild, I could laugh at myself, face to the bitter sea breeze and love that in that place and that time I seemed part of one of the most beautiful places in Britain. It meant that looking round Durham yesterday, twisting and turning through its higgledy-piggledy streets, I had to fight the urge to break off from my rag-tag family and go explore all the curious nooks and crannies. Yes, I think I'd be restless in any town as small as these two and I think I'd be mad if I had spent four years at either one straight after Haileybury. But I can see why my sister fell in love with the Cathedral and Castle. And I think there's a certain appeal in the small everyone-knowing-everyone atmosphere. Driving into her college today, we were clapped and cheered through the gates and the excitement of starting university somewhere like that was infectious. And you know... those 'Sylvia Plath cliffs' beneath crumbling stones that Alice described to me years ago... they're rather wonderful too... and I can't deny that living by the sea has enormous charm.

There's a couple more things to mention. 

Returning home from Durham, my pen finds itself in my hand. I finally finished a book I've been dipping in and out of over the last couple of weeks. It's an Ian McEwan novella - although it reads a lot like a collection of short stories (and there's something about them that makes me read it in the voice of that time-travelling master of the universe) - and it's called The Daydreamer. Vivid, fantastic and written with such insight to the way the dreaming, wondering, wonderful mind works, I sat for the remainder of the journey in a nostalgic, whimsical stupor, watching the dull green fields fly by beneath curling wisps of cloud and rain. 

In the aftermath of McEwan's words, I'm remembering things. The final chapter, 'The Grown Up', whisks me back to days down in Dorset when The Houseboat Gang raced the tide in,  building our castles higher and higher and moats deeper and deeper into dark wet sand, mornings spent splattering down the beach from Bounty to Sea Shanty and evenings wriggling sandy feet into sleeping bags. We would spring down the shoreline, nimble, weightless, flying through the dunes, making up games that would make any writer envious of all their miraculous storylines. There's a paragraph when he writes about how: 

'the sun sank... and the families gathered in one of the gardens for a barbecue. After they had eaten, the grownups would be far too content with their drinks and endless stories to set about putting the children to bed, and this was when The Beach Gang would drift away into the smooth calm of dusk, back to all their favourite daytime places. Except now there was the mystery of darkness and strange shadows, and the cooling sand beneath their feet, and the delicious feeling as they ran about in their games that they were playing on borrowed time. It was way past bedtime, and the children knew that sooner or later the grown-ups would stir themselves out of conversations and the names would ring out in the night air -' 

(McEwan, Daydreamer, 128-9)

As I read it I was back on Bramblebush Bay, barely aware of the echoing chink of the chain ferry down the beach, covered in white and black sand with Vicky, George, Rollo, Tom, Rosie and everyone else. It was our names on the end of the sentence. Every story has that wonderful allure, that assessment that's so perfect and evocative. Things like the 'Useful-Things Draw' (aka. the family-man-draw) that's inevitably full of junk like the tops of bottles, too short string and plain old peculiar 'stuff'. Or the contrast between a cat's morning and ours. 

The Houseboat Gang
Ludo, Rollo, George, Tom, Georgie, Rosie, Vicky and Me

At about this point, I realise I have a good couple hours left on the train and my face is twisted in a nonsensical smile that I'm sure made the boy sitting opposite me a little nervous. I also realise, watching the world disappear along the track, that I really enjoy travelling by train. That sentence could be followed by one that takes you back to the beginning of this post, back to Durham and the girl curled up on a train. What I failed to mention is the bubbling enthusiasm and sense of adventure that I've begun to identify in the last couple journeys. Standing on the platform, the time ticking down and the train about to approach - there's something in the anticipation. With a train, its rattle promises adventure. There's a hint of new places, new faces, new things to discover and explore and of course there's a little bit of risk too. Will you actually find your way to the right end of the line? Will the train take you where you want? Have you hopped on the right one? Who will you sit with? Who will you meet? You can meet anyone on a train and there's that feeling of infinite possibility... the same feeling I often have when crossing the Meadows, knowing you could bump into brilliance.

 So that's the last thing I really wanted to mention - how brilliant I've realised trains are. That's it. I won't write anymore. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie, 
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