Five Travel Related Things About Me

Glennia has kindly tagged me for a ‘five things about me’ meme. Because I have done this kind of meme before, I decided to give this one a theme. So, without further ado, here are five travel related things about me:

1) My first holiday without my parents was to Germany, a wonderful place, I had a great time. During the trip, my friends and I decided to visit Berlin – in those days it was still a divided city, one part capitalist West Berlin, the other communist East Berlin. Although, I was aware of this before I went, to actually see a city and a country divided both physically and ideologically had an enormous impact on me. It was both strange and sad to see people, who were in many cases related, being forced to live completely separate and different lives because of events over which they had little or no control.

2) Around the same time, the same group of friends and I went for an evening out in the town of Malvern. On our way home, we realised we did not have enough petrol, and went in search of a garage in the small Cotswold town we were driving through (I won’t name it for reasons that will become apparent). There was only one garage and it was closed, so we stopped a local man and asked him if he knew of the location of a petrol station. He pointed across at the one we had just found and responded ‘Yeah, that be one’. Realising we had encountered the village idiot, we asked in more specific terms if he knew of the whereabouts of a petrol station that was open. He replied in the negative, ‘We don’t have nothing like that around here’.

So, we decided to ask at the local police station – in those days, small towns still had such things. The desk sergeant backed up the VI, there was no garage open at that time of night (it was about 10.15) but he could help. A mini-bus belonging to a youth club had broken down on the outskirts of the town and as they were Christians he was sure they would let us have a can of petrol. We enquired how we were supposed to get at said petrol, and he replied that it would be easy because a few days before a local man had been arrested for syphoning petrol out of cars and they (the police) still had the tube. It did cross our minds that we were becoming accomplices in a ‘fit up’, but not wishing to spend a minute longer than was necessary in this increasingly odd place we kept our mouths shut.

3) When I was three, my Mum and I went to visit a friend of hers who lived in Canterbury. One day we went somewhere on a bus – I don’t know where – when we arrived at our stop, my Mum helped her friend lift her daughter’s pram off, and as soon as they had done so, the driver closed the doors and drove off with me still on board. Not surprisingly, I was a little perturbed and burst into tears, trying to explain to the driver, between sobs, that I should have got off at the previous stop. He took no notice of me, until an elderly woman, stomped up, told him he was an idiot and demanded that he stop immediately. I’m still not keen on bus drivers.

4) My ex-husband and I had many disagreements about map reading. He believed only men could do it, I knew this was a fallacy. At some time in the early ’90s we were driving down to the south coast to visit some friends, when his lack of map reading skills got us lost in Henley on Thames. We needed to find the road to Reading, and the only person around that we could ask was a very grand, tweed suited lady carrying a small wicker shopping basket. I wound down the window and asked for directions to the Reading road. At this she looked aghast and responded, ‘One never goes to Reading’.

The ex-husband gave up his claims of superior map readership after a trip to Ripon, when, due to his lack of direction, we ended up on the outskirts of Birmingham.

5) As you probably know, I don’t fly, the very idea terrifies me. However this isn’t a problem because you can get to some very nice places by boat. Whenever I am on a crossing which sails into Dover, I always come over all emotional at the sight of the White Cliffs. I have no idea why, I’m not overtly patriotic, but seeing them rising up in the distance brings a lump to my throat.

I won’t tag anyone in particular, but if you would like to have a go, feel free, and don’t forget to leave a comment so we can all come and have a read.