Cavalier Attitude

I spent an hour and a half in a cramped seat on the train. I was up out of my seat before anyone else in the carriage had stirred, kitbag and rucksack out of the overhead rack, coat buttoned, hat on my head. I stood in the doorway of the train, peering out at the gloom, trying to discern the name of passing North London Underground stations, or illuminated landmarks. There! That was Wembley Underground station... if only I could pry the doors open at the right moment, surely I'd end up in Sudbury or somewhere? But the train carries on, hurtling towards more fashionable climes, and all I can do is go with it.

The train eases into Marylebone station, insufferably slow. I'm the first out the doors, and as the crowd swells around me, I look up at the sky hanging high above the ironwork of the station roof, and I breathe out anger, frustration, weariness and then, in a rush that almost makes me feel lightheaded, I breathe IN...London.

They say that you can't go home.

I beg to differ.

As I walk briskly along the platform with a hundred other people, I can feel my shoulders relaxing. My legs, which have been complaining of the freezing weather in Coventry, are relaxing as I lengthen my stride and produce my ticket. Top up the oyster card at the machine then down, down, down the escalator (run don't walk) into the very depths of the Bakerloo line. I can't keep the grin from my face. Ten minute train journey west then sprinting, Rocky-style, up, up, up the stairs and Paddington Station soars above me while a thousand others pass by, blinded by exposure to the beauty of the arching ironwork. Quick! Run left, dodge the commuters and travelers staring dumbly up at the departure boards, through the barriers and onto the last train. It glides west, hatefully slow, but I can’t stop grinning.

And now, the problem. I have to leave again.

In our civil (to the point of rudeness) war, Royalist Prisoners were taken to Coventry after being captured in Birmingham. Consequently, the phrase “Sent to Coventry” has come to mean being ostracized, removed from and ignored by polite society. Men sent to Coventry were treated as if simply absent. And this is the city I am going back to (Charles the Useless, incidentally, apparently ordered the city walls destroyed, bringing the best-defended city outside of London back down to the level of its neighbors).

I was trying to work out why I was going back, when I was suddenly struck by a peculiarity of my timetable. My first lecture on a Monday, is at two o’clock.

Stuff Coventry. I’ll go back Monday morning, in the light. Extra 12 hours in London? Oh I think so.