I am having the most awful day, folks. I missed my first day at work this week yesterday because I was up the night before swotting, and missed my 4am train because of it.
So I really enjoyed being at home; I cleaned my house for the first time in, well, a month and a half I should say. I scrubbed and scraped and my oven is gleaming and my floors smell like lavender and tea tree and my washing basket is empty. I showered and epilated and oiled and washed my hair and scrubbed my face and dressed up nice and – well- clearly, it was the best day ever.
But it is my last week at work so I had to leave this morning. I simply had to, no amount of moaning about it or crying would change anything. But moan an cry I did. I groaned while I washed my face and cried in the mirror putting my cream on. I told my hair off for being such a relentless bush, and scraped it into the most atrocious bun you ever did see.
I scarfed a bowl of cheerios and a coffee as black and bitter as my mood. I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls at 3am and decided not to have a shower, dousing myself with deodorant and my husband’s manly perfume (don’t you agree ladies, they make men’s perfume so much stronger?).
I cried bitter tears whilst tying my shoelaces and told my husband I would not warm up the car even though he woke up at 5am to drive me to the station, never mind he had to be up at 7. But I did warm it up, I am not that cruel.
I was such a moany, horrible person this morning. Which is not very like me at all.
I think it was the fact that I woke up at 2:40am exactly, wide awake, heart throbbing, and was unable to go back to sleep. I am wired on exhaustion and concentrated coffee, much like a Gilmore Girl.
When I sat moodily in the train, I pulled out my phone to snap a routine snapchat of the train leaving the station at 5:21am, headed to London Euston.
I was about to caption it, ‘Ugh, thankfully this is the last time I have to take this crappy journey.’
But then. I sat. And thought.
Hang on.
That is pretty ungrateful.
It only took me three seconds.
So I wrote, ‘This is the last time I am doing this, hopefully it goes easy’
I don’t know what took over me there. I felt like utter crap, but why broadcast it? It wasn’t even about who would see it, it was about me projecting my bad feelings on the universe despite the fact that I am actually privileged to be on a train in the warmth going to a job that I don’t hate and will pay me – also, it’s the LAST JOURNEY?!
Sour puss, Lenora.
And I just realised that actually, I am pretty ungrateful. So.
Not a few minutes after that a lady passed me and smiled at me in such a lovely way that despite the dark cloud raining sorrow over me I was enticed to smile back at her. My teeth showed. She must have magical powers.
THEN, a few minutes later, the conductor came by asking for tickets. I realised my tickets were due to leave yesterday, and I had made an accident while booking. So we had a pretty decent chat about refund prices and how the Trainline is not the best website to book cross country train tickets and the better bet would be to use Nationalrail.co.uk (pssst, some good tips for you UK train travellers out there). And he got his special red pen that only conductors are allowed to use and MARKED MY TICKETS VALID AT NO EXTRA COST TO MYSELF!?
What a nice man. I think this morning taught me that actually, I should be more grateful and that there are nice people outside.
Also. My childhood American friend is coming to the UK from America for some time and while we were chatting on the phone she told me in the USA they do not travel cross country by train. They either plane it, drive it or take what they call a ‘greyhound bus’ and we call a ‘coach’. A ‘bus’ to us is that long metal vehicle that sometimes has two floors and smells of rubbish and sweat and costs four pounds return to take you ten minutes down the road to sodding Tesco; i.e. an ‘in-city’ bus. But it looks different from a ‘greyhound bus’ or ‘coach’.
The sun will rise, folks. That is a fact. Unless it doesn’t, in which case I stand corrected.
Spain. Yours truly.
Ocean Bream 