I like this village, I do, but sometimes I wonder about the inhabitants. People keep stopping and gazing at me in dumb amazement: 'Still here? I thought you were leaving for AMERICA?' Yes. Yes, well, if you'd walked past a newstand or turned on a TV or a radio over the last five days, you'd have noticed that there's a volcanic eruption going on and NONE OF US ARE GOING ANYWHERE.
I keep ducking my head in the village supermarket every time I pass someone to whom I've already said a lengthy, teary farewell. I didn't want to leave, but now it's embarrassing to still be here. Also, I have already taken my last nostalgic walk past Southcott Manor and my last stroll up to the canal past the waterlands, and eaten my Last Cornish Pasty, and drunk my Last English Ale, and read my Last Saturday Times, and I am very ready to leave now. I'm aware it could be worse - we could be trapped in a hotel room somewhere, watching our funds drizzle away, or stuck in an airport. But the lease on our house expires at the end of the month, as does our car insurance, our mobile phone contracts - and the sodding volcano keeps on exploding.
My husband keeps coming up with bright ideas. 'We could drive to Lisbon, and -'
Last time we drove back from London to Wiltshire, we got stuck in a traffic jam, and both children began writhing and screaming in concert. Jasper, not usually the most articulate of toddlers, started howling clearly 'No... car... me.... NO... CAR... ME' while Barnaby just howled. They kept it up past Reading, all the way home. I pointed out that possibly, just possibly, driving through France, Spain and Portugal was not going to work - not unless he wanted to listen to the tortuous repetition of 'NO... CAR... ME' all through most of Western Europe.
'What about a cruise ship, then..? I could send you and the boys on ahead -'
He is full of bright ideas.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Sunday, 18 April 2010
I can't pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull but I'm giving it a two-fingered salute anyway
We were supposed to fly at noon on Monday. We will not be going anywhere. Like everybody else who've found their travel plans thrown into utter disarray, I am taking the eruption of an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano very personally. Some of us are trying to emigrate over here, ICELAND, you BASTARDS.
I now wonder why I bothered wasting so much time worrying about the visa when there were volcanic eruptions to worry about instead. We were so worried about the possibility of the car breaking down, or trains not running (a very real possibility, given the state of British rail) that we actually booked a hotel room near the North Action Tube stop the night before my nine o'clock appointment at the Embassy. Jasper, bless him, finds hotel rooms wildly exciting, and bounced on the bed, flicked at switches, and behaved like a cheery maniac until long past eleven. Then he woke up, delighted, not long after six am. This meant that he was a tiny screaming trainwreck by the time we reached the security queues outside the Embassy, and kept trying to zoom off towards the guards. Finally I shrieked 'JASPER! If you run that way, YOU WILL GET SHOT!' and then had one of those moments when you realize that everyone is looking at you and judging your poor parenting efforts, including the armed security guards.
The US Embassy in London is a giant concrete edifice with a golden eagle squatting in menacing fashion on the roof. Once you are inside, you find yourself in a large waiting room with huge glass windows; it's rather like being trapped inside an unpleasant concrete sauna as the sun beams relentlessly in. The baby was sweating: the toddler was sweating: all of us were miserable. There were fans stationed around the room, but none of them were turned on. I hissed at my husband 'I thought you people invented air conditioning?' and he said huffily 'We wouldn't waste it on the ENGLISH.' Unfortunately, we'd shown up on the same day as they were processing the Camp America counsellors, so the room was packed with hundreds of young Brits in tight, unflattering clothing, clogging up the computers and saying intelligent things like 'So, what d'you mean, I need my PASSPORT?' They processed six hundred of them while we were waiting. Jasper raced up and down and up and down and bellowed 'OUUUUUUT' at us, but there was no out, and alas, also no play area as there is on the US citizens' side.
We finally had our interview in the early afternoon, conducted by a very good-looking blonde who made an excellent advertisement for the US. We strapped Jasper into the pushchair, and balanced Barnaby precariously up on the ledge next to the glass. She asked me how long I'd been married, and I said 'Oh Christ. I don't know. Forever?' Then she asked us what year we'd married in, and neither of us could remember, so we had to work it out on our fingers. ('If you were twenty-two, and I was twenty-three...') She asked us how we met, and I said 'Do you want the real story, or the one we're going to tell the kids one day..?' (The fictitious story is lovely, and involves me hurrying across campus, my hair all windswept, my lashes downcast, and dropping an armful of textbooks which my gentlemanly husband-to-be then scooped up. The other story involves a bar.)
She gave us the visa anyway. Possibly Barnaby wearing his father's black Italian eyebrows lent our marriage some validity, poor infant. And then we went home and innocently, blithely, booked tickets for the nineteenth.
I don't know what we were thinking.
I now wonder why I bothered wasting so much time worrying about the visa when there were volcanic eruptions to worry about instead. We were so worried about the possibility of the car breaking down, or trains not running (a very real possibility, given the state of British rail) that we actually booked a hotel room near the North Action Tube stop the night before my nine o'clock appointment at the Embassy. Jasper, bless him, finds hotel rooms wildly exciting, and bounced on the bed, flicked at switches, and behaved like a cheery maniac until long past eleven. Then he woke up, delighted, not long after six am. This meant that he was a tiny screaming trainwreck by the time we reached the security queues outside the Embassy, and kept trying to zoom off towards the guards. Finally I shrieked 'JASPER! If you run that way, YOU WILL GET SHOT!' and then had one of those moments when you realize that everyone is looking at you and judging your poor parenting efforts, including the armed security guards.
The US Embassy in London is a giant concrete edifice with a golden eagle squatting in menacing fashion on the roof. Once you are inside, you find yourself in a large waiting room with huge glass windows; it's rather like being trapped inside an unpleasant concrete sauna as the sun beams relentlessly in. The baby was sweating: the toddler was sweating: all of us were miserable. There were fans stationed around the room, but none of them were turned on. I hissed at my husband 'I thought you people invented air conditioning?' and he said huffily 'We wouldn't waste it on the ENGLISH.' Unfortunately, we'd shown up on the same day as they were processing the Camp America counsellors, so the room was packed with hundreds of young Brits in tight, unflattering clothing, clogging up the computers and saying intelligent things like 'So, what d'you mean, I need my PASSPORT?' They processed six hundred of them while we were waiting. Jasper raced up and down and up and down and bellowed 'OUUUUUUT' at us, but there was no out, and alas, also no play area as there is on the US citizens' side.
We finally had our interview in the early afternoon, conducted by a very good-looking blonde who made an excellent advertisement for the US. We strapped Jasper into the pushchair, and balanced Barnaby precariously up on the ledge next to the glass. She asked me how long I'd been married, and I said 'Oh Christ. I don't know. Forever?' Then she asked us what year we'd married in, and neither of us could remember, so we had to work it out on our fingers. ('If you were twenty-two, and I was twenty-three...') She asked us how we met, and I said 'Do you want the real story, or the one we're going to tell the kids one day..?' (The fictitious story is lovely, and involves me hurrying across campus, my hair all windswept, my lashes downcast, and dropping an armful of textbooks which my gentlemanly husband-to-be then scooped up. The other story involves a bar.)
She gave us the visa anyway. Possibly Barnaby wearing his father's black Italian eyebrows lent our marriage some validity, poor infant. And then we went home and innocently, blithely, booked tickets for the nineteenth.
I don't know what we were thinking.
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