The Taxi Driver

Colchester, UK, 3rd-5th August 2012

As someone who lived in the UK for a depressing number of years, I know the place very well. Still, whenever I go back, as I did for weekend to attend a friend's wedding, I find myself remembering some of the more quirky aspects of the country. The way that people who you have never met will call you "mate". The way that every town outside London looks exactly the same as every other. The fact that policemen stand around in any train station or airport carrying small anti-aircraft weapons around their necks. The ubiquitous and almost proud ignorance of anything like lies beyond British borders (aside from the Canary Islands and Ibiza). The impressive dedication to fair play and doing things by the rules (aside from for the rich and/or powerful). Such are the features that make the country distinctive.

The wedding took place in Colchester. We'd taken a train up there and hopped into a taxi to get to the hotel which was a short distance out of town. The taxi driver looked exactly the same as all other British taxi drivers - in his 40s, small pot belly, tennis shirt, shaved head. 

"You sound American, you do" he said to M

"I'm from Finland", she replied.

I made a small interjection about how she used to live in Halifax and, many years ago, spoke with a Yorkshire accent.

"What ? Fuckin' scouse accent ? Like Steven Gerrard ? Fuckin 'ell ! Can't stand 'em !"

Silence fell. I'm aware that Liverpool and Halifax are some distance from Essex but this was still quite an impressive display of total geographic ignorance. Especially coming from a taxi driver, whose job requires him to know where he's going. His car radio was providing background music as he explained how the taxi-driving business worked. He rents his car, he told us, and has to make upward of 400 pounds a week in order to turn a profit. Or something like that. The song changed.

"You know what, I don't care what anyone else thinks but, speaking as an Englishman..... That foreign music.... It's shit innit ? I mean, it's fuckin' rubbish ! Innit ? Innit ?" He repeated the innits as he looked at me, waiting for some sort of a reply. 

It doesn't happen all that often but I was completely lost for words.

NB: I feel that I should counterbalance this rather negative assessment of the UK with a list of things about it that I genuinely like. These include McCoy's crisps (salt and vinegar flavour in particular); the fact that special offers are so ubiquitous that it's nearly impossible to do anything for an unreduced price; the fact the people are generally friendly and curious with foreigners even despite the fact that those same pesky foreigners have flooded the UK with shit music, innit; and the self-deprecating sense of humour, which is probably an essential quality for those who live in a country where it rains all the time and all the towns look the same.

A fine example of the above-mentioned ubiquitous discount: This rack of sandwiches (expiry date: in 10 minutes) was reduced to an exceptional 8 pounds.

Holiday Extension

Lisbon to Madrid to Geneva, 29th-31st July

I wasn't really expecting to wave M off at Lisbon airport, but then again you can never be sure of anything in life.

It was on the train to Lisbon from Cascais that I first realised that my ID card was not in my wallet, where it has been for the last 10 years. A thorough search of my pockets revealed that it wasn't in any of them either, and on arrival at the airport I launched a full scale assault on my bag, which took a long time but resulted in nothing. Miika hadn't found it at his place either. Where the hell had it gone ? M suggested that I call our hotel in Sevilla on the off-chance that I may have left it there. The cheerful guy at the reception confirmed that it was, and I was stuck with no ID. After a desperate attempt at getting on the plane using my health insurance card (which, predictably, failed), I was faced with the reality of of the situation. I can normally talk my way out of trouble but EasyJet is a formidable opponent and there was no (legal) way that I was going to get through. M gave me a look that only women can give, its complexity out of reach to any man - part sympathy, part annoyance, part pity, part bloody-hell-not-this-again. I was suddenly waving as she went off to the plane and back to work, and I headed back out into the Portuguese sunshine and back into Lisbon. I would like to take this opportunity to confirm that this is the first time that such a plane-boarding failure has happened to me (although I have missed planes for various other reasons, nearly all involving my own incompetence) and I have no idea why or how my ID card was not in the same country as I was. 

I headed off to Oriente bus station and bought a ticket for the next available bus, which left at 11pm. It was now 1pm and so I bought "Fresh Air Fiend" by Paul Theroux (the pretentious father of the pretentious Louis Theroux), sat at the beach and read it until the sun went down. On my way to the beach I also tried to find the tower of Belém, Portugal's most famous landmark. I failed at that as well, although I did catch a glimpse of it from the train as I headed out to the suburbs for my beach session. I'd been looking for it at the wrong station. It all made sense.

The bridge to Setubal

The same bridge as in the previous post, just this time with fishing rods.

Another overnight bus session followed, and it was my penitence for not having my ID card on it. I probably clocked up about an hour of sleep. The only seat I could find was behind the central door and so my knees were jammed against one of those hard walls. The woman sat next to me was of a certain age and the owner of a smartphone which rang incessantly. Unfortunately the smartphone appeared to be new and she seemed unable to either answer it or refuse the call (or indeed turn down the volume) and so every so often I would hear the blare of heavy metal coming from her handbag and try to close my ears as she got increasingly flustered and violent towards her screen. We arrived in Sevilla at half past five, I tried to walk to the hotel and instantly got lost. Any other day, a wander through Sevilla's old town at night would have been a pleasure but I was desperate to find somewhere to sit down and try to have a nap again. I picked up my ID card, went straight to the train station, got a bucket of Coke from McDonald's (and I am ashamed) and bought a ticket for the next slow train to Cordoba, where I hoped to pick up another one towards Madrid, saving money in the process. Another hour and a half to kill, during which Coca-Cola company shares probably rose a little as I tried to stay awake. 

"A portrait of the artist as a tired man" - Sevilla, 6am

Cordoba pulled into view at 9.30 and it seemed that no slow trains ran north. The fast train was 80€. Fortunately, the bus station was just over the road and, 4 hours after swearing I'd never get on a long distance bus again, I bought myself a ticket for the far more pleasant price of 16€. The bus left at 2pm and would arrive in Madrid six hours later. I set up camp in a cyber cafe, bought some flights from Madrid back to Geneva and stared vacantly at the screen while keeping M up to date with developments over Skype. My breakfast consisted of a sandwich, carefully crafted from a supermarket baguette and a buy-one-get-one-free pack of chorizo. The second part of this became my lunch. It was a far cry from the tapas and limoncello of the ten previous days. After an interminable wait, I got onto the bus and, naturally, the guy who sat next to me was not only the largest person on the bus but also the one with the loudest music and the least soundproof headphones. I slept like a baby anyway.

 Sunrise from the train. Not a particularly interesting or good picture, but I didn't take many

 I wasn't sure if my friend Fiesta in Madrid was aware that I was coming. My phone battery had died and I'd sent him a text message from a newly acquired Spanish number that didn't appear to want to cooperate. I'd sent him a message from the cybercafe in Cordoba and hoped that he would check his emails before I arrived. As luck would have it, we arrived on his building's doorstep at exactly the same time. As always happens, my tiredness evaporated as the evening came and we ended up going out with his friends for a night out which lasted far too long. We got home at 6am on what was, for the second time of asking, the last day of this trip. Our tiredness ensured that the trip ended in exactly the way I would have wanted - with a day at one of Madrid's exotic and enticing municipal swimming pools.

Beach Bums

Cascais & Lisbon, Portugal, 25th-29th July 2012

Having finally arrived in Cascais, we were treated by Miika and Henna to a true travellers' welcome (beer and cheesecake) and eventually settled down to sleep. There was only one spare sofa so one of us would have to sleep on the floor - I did the gentleman routine and insisted that it be me, knowing that I would sleep like a baby anyway. This prediction turned out to be correct.

Host number 1 engaging in a kebab fight with M

...while host number 2 is far too busy for shenanigans like those.

Cascais is a small place on the coast so we did small-place-on-the-coast stuff. Fish at the restaurant. A day at the beach. Surfing.

The surfing episode was one that I looked forward to with bucketloads of trepidation. I always enjoy trying out new things, although I generally never miss an opportunity to injure myself and surfing seemed to fit the bill. Together with our South African instructor we did the basics on the beach: learnt how to lie on a board (successfully reproduced on the waves) and learnt how to stand up once we'd caught a wave. In the gentle, non-moving setting of the beach, the standing up was easy. It turned out to be less so once waves and motion were thrown into the mix. Normally a calm and reflective person, I managed to forget my left and right while trying to remember which side to stand up. Catching waves was easy - doing anything with them was not. Miika had done it before and we looked to him for inspiration, and one other guy in the group knew what he was doing as well. Looking to him for guidance was somewhat more difficult though as he was apparently the owner of an ultra-proud dad who stood on the beach taking pictures and waded into the sea shouting "WELL DONE OLIVER !" every time the guy managed to stand up. I caught a particularly good wave, sailed towards the shore, remembered which hand was my right and stood up with such enthusiasm that my forward motion propelled me up and over my board, crashing head-first into the sea before deciding that this probably wasn't going to be my day. Nonetheless, I'd managed to stand up - granted it was only for half a second and only on one leg, but it's a start.

We consoled ourselves with a beer at the beach bar afterwards, as all good surfers naturally do. I slept on the floor again, with very good results again.

T.I.C. - This is Cascais

While the gang busied themselves at the beach I headed into Lisbon for a bit of a wander around. It's an attractive town but looks more tired than Madrid and Sevilla. It's also probably the biggest city in Europe without a single flat surface as the roads undulate over hills all through town. It seemed a bit of a ghost town compared to those in Spain as well - most of the people milling around in the centre seemed to be tourists and the terrace restaurants were bursting at the seams. After wandering around and seeing everything I could be bothered to see, I hopped on the train back to Cascais. M insisted that I sleep on the sofa as I'd be more comfortable but its length combined with the arm rest ensured I woke up with a cricked neck every hour through the night. I decided to be a gentleman the following evening and sleep on the floor again.

 I don't remember what this is

This is a fountain 

This is a theatre 

 And this is a tram.

 The seafront at Cais do Sodre station

It was a lazy time in general and we were shown around slowly by the delightful hosts who seem to have adapted to the Mediterranean pace. It was a sudden jolt from this pace to find ourselves on the train back to Lisbon, heading for the airport. And that should be the end of the story. For me, it was not........