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(22nd December 2002)
Leaving the car outside the hotel (Sunday being an oasis of relaxed parking restrictions - 20 pence for six minutes being prohibitively expensive had the usual restrictions been in place) I headed to King's Cross. I'd suggested to my good friend Mike that I could jump onto the Northern line and go and see both him and his lovely lady wife Sophie. He'd baulked at this suggestion, preferring instead that I take the Metropolitan line and go and see him and his lady wife at their home, rather than head off in completely the wrong direction and expect to be rescued like the sort of numbskull who doesn't know which train to catch. Actually, he didn't say much of this, but if I'd have been him, I would have though it.
Visiting Northwood was great. Good company, good chat, exchange of news and other stories, along with an excellent Chinese meal, which I completely failed to beat Mike to paying for. All in all, it was a great way to spend the evening. I sort of wished it had lasted longer, partly because I enjoyed the company, partly because I enjoy company full stop, and partly because my aim was to extend my hours of waking as long as possible in an attempt to adjust my body clock out of sync with the day, reading for impending night shifts. However, this was not to be. A particular combination of my hosts having an early morning flight, and my desire to be able to use London Transport for the remainder of my evening's journeying, meant we called it a night before the little hand got too close to 11.
Working out that waiting four extra minutes for a train could save me time, I found myself being conveyed at speed in some sort of bouncing and groaning vehicle, which nearly, but not quite, managed to distract me from reading the Les Miserables programme, which I'd reclaimed from Mike at the 11th hour (well, nearly) having left it there on my last visit, and having nearly left it for a second term. Following a quick change at Baker Street, and a quick moment spent dropping things off in my hotel room, I was back in the car, headed for Oliver and Nicky's place in Newington Green. This time I needed simply to park the car somewhere for free before returning to my hotel room. The previous journeys I'd made between King's Cross and Newington Green, by car and bus had prepared me well to make this an eventless journey. I only made one wrong turning, which I immediately knew how to correct. The first tentative steps of my acquiring "The Knowledge" had been made!
According to my reckoning, the finger of destine had been point out exactly what to do since I'd been standing on the platform in Northwood. Within a couple of minutes of reaching the bus stop in Newington Green, car safely (I hoped) parked, what I believe to be the last bus of the evening appeared and I was being safely conveyed back towards the sanctity of my hotel.
The hotel itself is a sanctuary of sorts. With its permanently locked twin front doors and its non-nonsense approach to friendly hospitality, it is somewhere in which I was comfortable staying in the generally not-too-salubrious King's Cross area. The streets of this area, on the other hand, are less comfortable. Returning from Northwood to get my car, and returning from Newington Green, without it, were both performed on foot at a time of day when the area is at its more threatening. When faced with this environment, my approach is to become deaf and blind - using my peripheral vision to ensure I'm not being targeted, my body language to look more confident than I am, and my intuition to determine when might be a good time to change route, just in case.
Noone ever got hurt being over careful.
I make a visit to the local mini-market (a place I would spend a huge amount of money in the following days) between alighting the bus and getting into my room. The hook above the wash-basin became a banana hook and the ashtray on the dressing table - unneeded by non-smokers such as me, became a diet-coke bottler holder. Opening the promotional bottle of diet coke, I became not the proud drinker of Mr Coke's fine beverage, but another loser of his promotion. XXX is not a prize - not in this game!
Despite my intention to stay awake into the small hours and wake up late, I was sleeping by two, and awake before 10am. D'oh!
04 February 2003
Ashley Frieze