Photo by Jennifer Lim on Google Maps
Up early, a last double-check of the pack. Everything in, nothing forgotten?
The taxi toots. We bundle in. ‘Coach station please.’
Saturday, turnaround day, the holidaymakers go home.
The driver calls, ‘London Victoria.’ That’s ours.
The coach is crowded, multi-ethnic skins and loud London voices. They soon settle down.
Tightly squeezed through Suffolk towns, already congested when coaches used horses, the last pick-up done, and like a bird from a cage, the coach escapes onto the motorway.
Now we’re freewheeling, next stop London.
Soon after, we’re under that whopping circular flyover. We groan. Beyond here the chug-chug begins … past shop fronts bright with cheap clothes and sarees, past street-markets, synagogues and temples. Past Big Ben and Buck House until disgorged at ARRIVALS.
Packs reclaimed, we hurry across the road to DEPARTURES and check out the boards. For London is never our destination.
Wordcount 143
Written for What Pegman Saw: London
