Coffee and croissant consumed. The efficiency of double-glazing confirmed. The smallest bath towel known to man used by man. These are the headlines so far for Tuesday 15th March 2011.
It was quite late when I arrived at my hotel in Portes-lès-Valence last night, after an interesting journey by train from the north-east of England to the Drôme region of France. Having taken Lucy to school, I picked up my baggage from home and caught the bus to the metro station, catching the metro train up to Newcastle, where I had a 45 minute wait for the train to London. Those metal seats they have in the station are surprisingly comfortable, but astonishingly cold!
The journey to London was uneventful, which I suppose is another word for 'good' these days. The London terminal at Kings Cross is undergoing renovation, with the whole interior seemingly clad in plywood and shrouded in cloth. Notices proudly announced the arrival of a new platform – platform 0. Now this is something new to me, being from up north. It must be quite exciting, travelling by platform. Just think, arrive on the platform, depart on the platform, arrive on the platform. If they enclosed it, and put wheels on it, and added a few seats, it would be almost as good as a train.
I'm not normally so facetious so early in the journey, but then hey, I have just had my breakfast (continental) and I'm ready for the world.
Don't listen to him, he's facetious most of the time!
As I feared, the inner voice is back again. Ah well, it wouldn't be a show without Punch.
OK, but be ready for the odd uppercut now and then – see what I did then, playing on words, 'Punch' – 'uppercut'?
Anyway, back to the journey south. The next stage involved the transfer from Kings Cross to the Eurostar Terminal at St.Pancras, which is quite easily achieved, since they are only about 100m apart. I checked in and made my way into the queue for the security check. I had moved all my metallic objects into my jacket so that I wouldn't set off any alarms, but was till asked to remove my Rohan adventurer's jungle explorer waistcoat ( you know the kind of thing – so many pockets that you can never remember where you put anything).
You mean that you can never remember where you put anything!
Perhaps, but in this case it was completely empty, apart from my passport. All other 9 pockets devoid of content, hanging limply on my person, clearly cleared out for the occasion. But no, “Please remove your body warmer, sir, and place it in a tray.”
Body warmer? Body warmer!!
“This is no body warmer, sir, but a multi-pocketed adventurer's waistcoat. The only way this would keep my body warm is if I packed all ten pockets with goose down, and as you can plainly see I haven't,” I almost said, removing the garment and placing it in the tray. I confidently moved through the security metal-detector portal type thing and strode confidently forward to pick up my suitcase and back-pack. But, … .. they must not have liked what I almost said, since the next security operative asked, “Is this your back-pack sir?”
“You've got me, yes it is.”
“Everything in it is yours, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind opening it sir?”
“Not at all, go ahead.”
“No sir, you open it.”
“OK”
“No sir, you open it, I will take everything out.”
“OK”
And so it was that the entire contents of my pack were laid out for all to see: various electronic devices, medical supplies, crocs, travel documents, tesco bag containing food items, and last but not least, my carefully bagged ham, grated 4 cheese and Dijon mustard sandwiches which I had prepared earlier – he even opened the bag! Having checked everything for traces of explosive chemicals, he smiled up at me and said:
“Everything in your bag is fine sir.”
To which I almost replied:
“Fine? Everything in my bag is fine? I know it's fine, I packed the ostie thing myself. Tabernac!! (I throw that in for any québecoix readers.)
“Would you like me to pack the items back into your bag for you sir?”
I should have said, “Yes.”, but I didn't. It would have been interesting to see how he would have packed the bag, Would he have replaced everything exactly as it was, or would everything just have been rammed in anywhere.
Hang on, wasn't that how you packed it in the first place?
Not now, I'm in full flow!
Isn't that that why you've got the medical supplies?
Shut up!!
There's only so much excitement one person can take, so, having repacked my bag, I moved off towards the lounge, only to be frozen to the spot by an “Excuse me sir” accompanied by a hand placed on my arm. Damn, they must have worked out that my sandwiches contained a plan for flooding the Rhône with Dijon mustard, causing untold environmental damage for decades to come, whilst at the same time providing free sandwich enhancing materials for all entrepreneurs south of Valence. In his other hand, the one that wasn't on my arm, that is, the security chap had a piece of paper. “Is this yours, sir?”
“Ah, yes, thank you very much, my Eurostar print-at-home ticket. Very kind of you.”
Having gone through passport control without incident, I decided that the evidence must be destroyed, and sat down in the lounge to consume my sandwiches, a chocolate wafer bar (which doubles as a homing device) and a magnum of champagne, carefully disguised as a 50cl bottle of Evian. Boarding Eurostar trains usually commences 20 minutes before departure time, so I had moved a little closer to the gate about 25 minutes before departure time. But there was some kind of problem – walkie-talkies were walkie-talkieing, whispered replies to unheard messages. Something was afoot! The gaze of the young lady at the gate was focussed upon the security gates at the other end of the lounge. Was someone else trying to smuggle through a ham and mustard sandwich?
It was some four minutes later that a group of people strode through the security check-in, and across the lounge, in single file, with a Eurostar official at their head, in turn followed by non other than Her Majesty's Foreign Secretary, the Rt. Hon. William Hague M.P. His entourage endeavoured to keep up with him, (don't we all?), and even the police escort seemed to be struggling to sustain the pace of this leader among men.
Do I detect a slightly sarcastic tone in the last paragraph, as though you are not really an admirer of the said Right Honourable gentleman?
Yes.
Fair enough.
The gates the opened for the rest of us plebs, and up the travelator we went. More police, this time with sniffer dogs moved along the outside of the very long train. At each open door a dog would jump up into the train, sniff, (as they do), and jump down again. Amazingly the train left exactly on time, just as I was preparing a letter to The Times about missing a connection in Paris due to the tardiness and incompetence of the Foreign Secretary.
Never mind, I'm sure there will be plenty more opportunities to complain about the Foreign Secretary.
I'm certain of it. Once again the journey from London to Paris was uneventful, but very fast – two hours and ten minutes. On alighting from the train, I found my self moving down the platform as an unofficial rearguard to the William Hague entourage, walking alongside the police escort. I even walked past the police escort, and was within a few feet of the Rt Hon gentleman. “Yon William has a pale and hungry look”. Well, not so much hungry, but definitely pale. A pale, shiny head in fact. He must wear a lot of make-up on TV. He's very small too.
Leaving Oor Wullie to head off to his police escorted cavalcade of black limousines, I moved towards the RER, pausing at the top of a flight of stairs to reposition my backpack and suitcase.
“Do you need a little 'elp, monsieur?”
This from a young lady about 1.50m small, but very caring, and who could clearly detect my nationality, before I opened my mouth. How do they do that?
“No, thank you. That was very kind of you.!”
I found my way to a ticket-machine – €1.70 for the trip from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon, and squashed on to the train for the 10 minute journey. I got to know some people very well during the journey, since we were packed together very closely. Then it was off the RER train, and following the signs for Les Grandes Lignes, I found my way into the station proper. I composted my ticket, bought another bottle of water and a sandwich mixte (ham and cheese) for later.
Just a moment. When you say you composted your ticket, do you mean you composted your ticket?
No, I composted my ticket in the French sense of the word. I didn't put it into a bin with some form of bio-active agent. I put it in to a little yellow machine which validated the ticket. You have to do that before you get on the train.
Eventually I boarded the train, which was amazingly long. There were about twenty coaches and two locomotives. Part of the train was going to Grenoble, and the other part to Avignon, the split taking part at Lyons. It seems that I boarded the right part, because at 10.12 CET the train pulled into the Gare de Valence Ville. After a lengthy wait for a taxi ( they were all busy in the town centre apparently) eventually I arrived at my Hotel in Portes-lès-Valence. The Hotel is situated about 100m from the autoroute, and so the double glazing proved its effectiveness.
The room is basic. The towels are tiny. The coffee was good.
I'm now about to explore. It seems that the Train Theatre is about a 15 minute walk from here. We'll see. It was raining earlier, but seems to have … no it hasn't, it's still raining.
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