Five days in the Valley
MONDAY
So I gets all packed in pretty good time after an admittedly nice lie-in. The taxi came on time, I had enough time to get cash out and buy some water and a snickers (marathon) bar from WH Smiths (Menzies). I wandered down to the train station and bought a return ticket. So I sit on the platform and play the old waiting game. An announcement tells us the next train at platform 2 will be the 12.50 that stops at Shrewsbury only and is 18 minutes late. They aplogised for any inconvenience, but it didn’t sound sincere to me. This was confirmed on the swanky lcd display screens. So the train comes in. I stay seated. I thought it was quite long for a train just going to Shrewsbury. As the train pulls out of the platform it is clearly labelled “Aberystwyth” on it’s back end, taunting me like a foul-mouthed boy from the back of the school bus sticking his fingers up at commuters behind. Bollocks. The Aberystwyth train disappears from view and from the display screens. The next train isn’t for two hours. What to do? I believe I did the right thing. I went to the pub.
So two hours and three pints of Stella later I’m finally Aber-bound. You see I actually quite like trains once you’re on them, once you are reltively safe from the authorities fucking it up. I was a bit paranoid about leaving my laptop anywhere so I had it down by my feet. Which was fine until the three pints began their own little journey southwards. I was concentrating on not pissing from about Caersws onwards. I wasn’t the most excited on the train when the sea came into view. There was summat else to look at. In the seat infront was a lovely French blonde girl, really nice. I always fancy people on trains. I think I like bored girls. I also like listening to music as the view constantly changes outside, Sigur Rós fits brilliantly with the dramatic Welsh landscape, especially as the hills lower into the Dyfi estuary creating an amphitheatre of green and brown. Bliss.
So I’m in Aber two hours late, no time to wander about I’ve got to get to my accomodation above the laundrette. It’s about half five in the afternoon, I said I’d be there about 3ish. I stagger past the washing machines and tumble dryers and rang the bell. Nothing happened. Nothing happened for a long time. Shite. I give up, I’ve never been so angry to the smell of fabric conditioner. I wearily wander back out on to the street. I thought I’d have to try a b&b. I walked to the end of the road, past my old house, the kitchen light was on, I think they still have the same wallpaper up. There was no light from my old room. I wondered if the bed was still broken.
I try the Savannah next to the Town Hall. There were vacancies. I apologised for not phoning in advance and told the landlady about the laundrette. She offered me all she had, a double room, but she knocked the price down a bit. Not as low as the laundrette charged by the way. In all that misannouncement at Wellington train station has cost me an extra 12 quid a night. Bastards. And I’ll never get up for breakfast neither. I’ve got better things to be doing between 8 and 9 o’clock. Still it’s an nice bed, and the room is warm with a view of the Queen’s Square. It’s well chintzy though. Seaside b&bs alway feel like you’re squatting in an OAP’s house. Little china cats and reader’s digest books fill up the shelves and there’s more flowers on the curtains than in the garden.
TUESDAY
I didn’t really do anything of interest today. I got up late and missed me breakfast, I went for a walk to the seafront and watched a dog shit in the sand. There was also a couple of hardy Knuts sitting on deckchairs. In February! It made me colder as I watched them. I strolled about a bit more. I think I was regretting not actually having a purpose to be here. I was mulling a lot of things over, like is this home, and why do I not recognise anyone or them me. Whether my goal to get here was actually a goal to get away from Telford, do I really want to leave Telford, have I been aiming to move to Aber just to aim at something, without really thinking what I already have? Blimey, I dunno. So I went to that mecca of existentialism, vintage film posters and good espresso, The Cabin (no smoking between 12 and 2, the place has gone upmarket). I felt a bit better after I’d eaten summat, I’d hardly eaten yesterday, too busy fucking about on train station platforms and in abandoned laundrettes.
So my room. It has a double and a single bed, wardrobe, desk, telly on a bracket, and a sink. The curtains, quilt covers and pillowcases are all a matching cream floral design. Lovely. On the old mantlepiece there is two ceramic dogs (1 x spaniel; 1 x Saint Bernard’s), a small glass vase of pot pourri that I have failed to smell so far. There are two small ornamental plates with watercolour-esque images of birds on (1 x peacock - upside down; 1 x robin), and an empty wine bottle (mine, it was a cheeky Sicilian Pinot Grigio - the only dry white in Threshers with a screwtop - gotta think about these things carefully). Further along there is a selection of reading material, we have the ‘Action Book for Girls’ (nowhere near as interesting as it sounds), a 1980 Children’s World Atlas (useful for teaching the bairns where Leningrad or Yugoslavia is), a prayer book, a Bunty annual, an Enid Blyton and a Rudyard Kipling, and of course the ubiquitous Readers Digests. Riveting.
WEDNESDAY
I missed breakfast again. So I when I finally got up, I popped along to Bar Essential for a lamb burger and a pint of Brains. I had a wander around a bit in the late winter sunshine. The burger repeated on me a bit, so I got me money’s worth. I bought some keks from the Officer’s Club (used to be Peacocks, now about a pound dearer), and some shower gel from Boots, I hadn’t packed very well you see. I went to try and register at Travail but they’d moved. I didn’t do much else except read the Children’s World Atlas in my room and watched some stuff on my computer (Boosh, The Thick of It and Life On Mars). Lazy days. Oh yeah I got another bottle of the Sicilian screw-top. My bin didn’t get emptied yesterday and now there’s a couple of empties in there. It looks like the room of a wino. Tomorrow I’ll either have to dispose of them myself or not drink. Or drink in a pub on me own. Hmmm.
THURSDAY
God it was cold this morning, and I slept so well I didn’t get up till late again. Tomorrow I’ve got to leave by ten, I’ve no idea how I’m going to get up and pack in time. I’d got things to do today, like visit Andy’s Records and the Wetherspoons and to try and buy a stick of rock for someone at work. I opened the curtains and lo, the snow god had visited overnight and shot his load all over the streets. It looked pretty from the window but I knew I’d not exactly come prepared for snow. In all the time I’d been in this town I’d seen snow only a couple of times. I’d only packed t-shirts and my footwear consisted of one pair of tatty adidas grey suede sambas, with a pretty worn tread. I looked down on those slushy streets and they looked back and winked, “you’re going down clumsy boy”, I thought I heard them gruffly promise. So I gingerly walked down to Andy’s Records, I was overtaken by a pair of old women and a snail, but I got there without slipping. I spent more time in the shop than I normally do, I was probably a bit wary of going back outside, but I put the airs on of someone who was looking for an ultra-rare album. Plus they were playing Sufjan Stevens in there, so I wasn’t rushing, topically it was “Avalanche” CD, oh those zany record store guys. Talking of which, on a shelf there was a massive Mozart box-set promising “170 CD’s of dead guys playing violins”.
I stepped back out once I had perchased a living artist’s album. I carfeully staggered to the jobcentre and tutted vacally at the lack of jobs for directionless lazy graduates. So I crossed the road and trod that familiar path from labour exchange to pub. No ice there. A couple of Stellas and a hot sausage and onion baguette, if you’re interested. This seems to be turning into a journal of what I’ve eaten, where and what I washed it down with. I apologise for that, but I’m not really doing much else. I couldn’t find anywhere selling rock. I thought as much, I did remind my workmate that it was winter, and even the homeless find somewhere else to flog the Big Issue than Aberystwyth in February… in an effing blizzard. I meandered to the seafront like a river in scarf and parka. The sea was choppy, probably a bit pissed off that the snow was getting all the attention. A couple of days ago I was surprised to see people sitting on the beach with that island-nation hardiness that suggested “we’ll sit here and bloody well enjoy it, even if it’s a nat’s shivering pube above zero degrees. We didn’t beat the Jerry’s by sheltering from icy winds you know”. Today the beach was more populated, this time by a big snowball fight.
In the evening I bought a bottle of wine, drank it and then I went back out and bought another bottle and drank that too. I’d be dead in a year if I had to live in a B&B. I don’t think there’s anybody else in the house, so I had a shit with the door open. I’m a bit drunk. I’ve realised I talk to myelf quite a lot. I’ve been reading this out as I type. “I’m Stavros, no, I’m Stavros.”, see! Heehee. Night.
FRIDAY
Yes! I finally woke up in time for breakfast. No! There’s nobody here to make me any. Shite, I could’ve done with summat, my head’s thumping a bit. It’s even more snowy out there, I’m bound to fall over with suitcase and laptop in my hands.
I missed the train by ten minutes, but I wasn’t annoyed because I didn’t know when it was anyway. So I sat in the Wetherspoons drinking tea and eating toast, I should have kept the receipt and posted to the B&B for a refund. I was being talked to by the last of the crusties for ages, the train couldn’t come soon enough. He was venting lots of ire about Thatcher and the police state. I didn’t have the heart to tell him she stepped down in 1990. He was friendly in that annoying way where you just can’t bring yourself to say “Fuck the fuck off you old hippy twat and take your stupid bloody hair and your roll-ups and your fucking tales of Stonehenge with you”. You know the type. As I stood up to get on the train, he tells me he’ll see me on there. He was wrong, I hid from him.
The journey back home was pretty, especially around Newtown where the snow was falling like the confetti of a thousand weddings. It was quite heavy back at Wellington train station too, the snow seems to fall in slow motion, and has an uncanny knack of finding that slight gap between your collar and the back of your neck.
