Today’s alarm went off at six. I scrambled a suitcase together, bleary eyed, and shot on a train to London for a two hour meeting, before bundling myself back onto the train and hurtling the other way, back to Cardiff, where I’ll then embark on a four/five hour journey to North Wales.
“That’s a heck of a lot of traveling” my mother commented last night, as I told her my crazy plan.
I hadn’t considered it before, but I guess it is. I’ll tally up how many hours I’ve spent on the move once we arrive at our destination this eve, as it’ll probably be an interesting taster of what’s to come this year.
Thing is, I’ve spent so much time in cars, busses and trains the last few years, a long journey has almost become second nature – part of the routine. I met my boyfriend in London when I was 25, when I moved there for work. Six months later, I was moving back to Wales again for another job, but by then we’d have too many awkward snogs/had seen each other naked and didn’t heave, so we decided to give long distance a try.
That was nearly four years ago. Three months ago, Ben moved to Wales, and as we celebrated our three year anniversary finally living together (after two years of frantic Megabusses and shit petrol station dinners) we couldn’t help ponder our future together.
“You’re turning thirty next year,” said Ben. I gave my declining youth a brief, shuddering thought before steering the conversation elsewhere.
“Shall we get something nice to eat tonight?”
“What are you going to do for it?”
“Dunno. I’ll probably get a bit pissed and be rude to one of my last remaining friends… who I’ll apologise to the next day… but perhaps in vengeance someone’ll film me throwing up in a bin or on a small child, which’ll go viral and end my career, then I’ll and wake up with beer fear and crippling anxiety that I’m now another comrade down and potentially jobless as I hurtle ever faster towards death… Same old, really. What shall we do for tea, pizza?”
”Are you gonna have a party?”
“Christ no. No one would turn up. I wouldn’t turn up, if I had a choice. Which I do, hence not having one.”
”You’ve got to do something for it.” He mused. Obviously not willing to let this one drop and let me go gently into that good night. “We should make a list, 30 things we need to do before 30.”
“That’s a big old commitment. Maybe we should just choose a few things… like five? That should make it a bit more manageable.”
“Ok, what do you want to do?”
I pondered. “Well, I’ve never done a bottomless brunch…”
“Excellent! It’s going on the list.” He said, whacking his phone out and constructing an e-list on our shared ‘Couple’ app… (I know, we’re those people. But again, long distance is really flipping hard and combined shopping lists are a really easy passive aggressive way to make sure he gets the milk in.)
“Ok, great!” I smile, realising I can get on board with this. “Bottomless brunch, and maybe a trip to Paris? You’ve never been so…”
I watched in awe as he punched the letters in. Was he genuinely complying with this crazy wish list, no questions asked? If 29 was the magical year of bottomless brunch and spontaneous travel, maybe I’d been to quick to dismiss this turning 30 malarkey.
“What about you? What’s going on your list?” I asked, hoping perhaps Budapest was on the cards. Or Italy! We’d always talked about taking a road trip across…
“I’d like to visit every county in the UK.”
“Random… but what are you putting on your list? Ski-trip? Maybe we could get a gang, book a chalet-“
”No, I mean that – for my list. I want to visit every county!”
“But, there are loads of them…”
“Exactly! It’ll be a proper challenge, we can document it, take a photo next to a sign in every country – to prove we’ve been there.”
”But, then we can’t just drive through one country on the way to another, like, if we were catching the Eurostar…”
“Nope!”
”But, we’ve only just stopped doing long distance… it’s gonna be back to Friday nights on the motorway and petrol station sandwiches…”
”Just like old times!” He said, without a hint of sarcasm.
So here I am, Cardiff bound, eating a packet of crisps and Diet Coke as there were no train sandwiches on board today… so I thought I’d start documenting. I have a feeling this blog might be nice to look back on for the eve of my thirtieth, before I start by inevitable prosecco infused spiral and wake up older, alone and unemployed.
11 Jan 2018:
Hours traveling: tbd
Food consumed: toast in the car, crisps on train.
Go the Distance 