Rest Period

At Paddington I board a train unchanged in ten years. This is a holiday about going back, about stepping into old boots and dry raincoats, about remembering what it is to stop. It's a four hour journey and to pass the time I listen to a grandmother tell a story about Franklyn and his Fly Sandwiches. Franklyn is a tortoise. She injects the tale with less drama than you'd find in an empty bucket, but it says something for the source material that I listen to the end. At last we arrive and five minutes out of the station I'm climbing the walls with boredom, itching for my Blackberry. Cornwall is a lot like the Shire but with more Pirates; grown men with beards and bandanas and nothing to do but smoke roll-ups and go without washing. It takes me three days to switch off, and the day I do I lose sight in one eye and go down with a migraine. I spend my remaining time staggering around in sunglasses, like some low-rent rock star. On the train home, the hot chocolate I order tastes of thin water, I play with a pen and try to read the newspaper. Maybe I'm allergic to holidays, I think.