Tag Archives: Megabus

London: A Whirlwind Trip

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A whirlwind blog about a whirlwind trip…

The early morning Megabus man is not rude to us and we do not witness any racism.  We are pleased. Beardy watches movies on his phone.  I listen to music in my giant green headphones. I thoroughly enjoy my updated playlist and am rather smug with myself for having made it.  I note The Proclaimers tracks as particular high points.

We arrive in London in good time. We glug pints of ice cold Coca-Cola in our new favourite dive bar.  We don’t go to The Shakespeare any more.  We’re all about The Traveller’s Inn now.  We are fickle.

We negotiate our way to Fish Island, the underground and overground train journeys made easier by the fact we were carrying unusually tiny luggage.  We stand uncomfortably close to fellow passengers and I feel I really ought to at least say hello to the woman with whom I am standing thigh to thigh.

Leona’s place has a new door.  We drink a glass of wine with our hostess before heading out to The Hackney Pearl for dinner.  We all eat pizza.  I think my pizza was the best pizza I’ve ever had.  It had pumpkin on it.  I love pumpkin.

I controversially announce that I hate the queen.  Beardy & I reminisce about Adventure Mountain* as we settle down to sleep on the inflatable mattress.

With sleepyheads, we eat breakfast at Stour Space.  I order my usual big veggie plate but am disappointed my mushrooms are not replaced with something else and am raging that Leona & I’s little adlib about how thrilled  I was to get an avocado last time is ignored. ‘Twas a fine performance nonetheless.

Beardy and I head to Brick Lane in search of Blitz – the vintage department store I’d heard about.  We find it.  We love it.  We are relieved that it’s not full of dicks and we love that the man behind the counter is friendly and lovely.  We coo over expensive furniture and I nearly buy a new winter coat but then don’t**.  We enjoy cake in a cafe clearly intended to be patronised by young people. I get excited by a Bros poster they have on the wall.  I wish I was a young person. Kind of.

We get soaked in the rain.  My blue cagoule is wet through.  We dry off in a super-cool hang out in Bethnal Green.  Leona comes to meet us and we weave in and out of galleries on Vyner Street for a bit.  I step in a puddle and proceed to make a disgusting squelching noise as I walk. Before hopping on the bus, we pop (squelch) into The Last Tuesday Society and I get excited about taxidermy and sauciness.  We have no time to take up the offer of gin in teacups.

We reach Rough Trade East for the State of Craft party  and are thrilled to meet up with some pals.  I chat to State of Craft publisher, Ziggy, and tell her how much I love the book.  I do love the book.  I try to congratulate our gal Victoria on editing a fabulous DIY volume, but she’s quite obviously up to high dough so I curtail my conversation to a brief, “Well done”.  I think Victoria  is relieved that I stop talking to her . Ziggy gives a warm, lovely and engaging speech and I tear up when she thanks Beardy for his massive contribution to the book.  We head off in search of food.

We don’t eat.  Instead, we get piddly at The Pride of Spitalfields round the corner.

We arrive home having enjoyed a quick pitstop in the bagel shop***.  Somehow we have bottles of Desperados but I don’t really remember getting those.  Leona trumps my ‘Facebook disco’ by initiating a real-life You Tube disco in her front room.  We dance and sing in the dark.  The B52s, Technotronic,  The Soup Dragons, Dee-Lite, The Rebel MC, Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Price – they all get our Fish Island disco treatment.

We dance ourselves to sleep.

Beardy & I repack our Fred Perry bags and head outside.  We agree we ought to do something touristy.  We go to the V&A.  I am excited to visit the Postmodernism exhibition.  I am devastated when the man tells me I need to pay £12.50 to go inside.  I don’t have £12.50.  Beardy offers to pay half of my ticket so that I can go in but tell him I wouldn’t enjoy it if he wasn’t with me anyway.  We go to the hall next door and look at an exhibit of postmodern photography instead.  That cheers us up.

We drag ourselves through South Kensington and on through Knightsbridge.  We feel sorry for Harvey Nichols since their winter window display is nowhere near as cool as Harrods’. Feeling a little bit light-headed, we pop into what appears to be a crazily fancy patesserie for a quick sugar hit.  That’s a story all of its own.  We head back to The Traveller’s Inn and eat onion rings until it’s time to get on the bus.

Beardy is really pleased when the Megabus man announces that all the passengers bound for Manchester are being ferried off on a seperate bus from ours.  Beardy has an irrational hatred of Manchester and the ‘crazy bastards’ that go there (?).

I eat Hula-Hoops and Fruit Pastilles until my mouth is cut and sore.  I watch tv on my phone for the first time and Beardy laughs aloud as he reads his Stewart Lee book.  Beardy is enraged by the man with terrible body odour and the girl who’s chewing gum too loudly.  I fall asleep with my mouth open and am embarassed.

Our taxi driver is too loud.

Smokey Cat is pleased to see us.  We can tell because she knocks her scratching post over, pukes on the floor and then rubs her head off our luggage.  I add State of Craft to our special book shelf above the couch then we slide into our pyjamas.  I regret not having a shower before bed. I am covered in London slime and Megabus stink.  Smokey Cat purrs us to sleep.

*Adventure Mountain:  When Beardy and I started dating, he slept on a blow-up bed. Over time, the grooves in the mattress started to ‘ping’ and eventually, the blow up bed was no longer rectangular or even vaguely mattress-like but was instead,  just a big baggy ball of air.

** I nearly bought a pastel blue Eskimo coat.  It has a big pointy hood with real fur stitched round the edge, a big chunky plastic zip with a polar bear charm hanging from the end and beautiful embroidered motifs along the bottom hem.  I decided against it on account of it’s grubbiness  :(

***The bagel shop only offered two filling options – salami and smoked salmon.  I like neither, but Beardy likes both.  When he asked for smoked salmon AND salami on his bagel, he blew the bagel man’s mind!

London: Travelling Light. Travelling Heavy.

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Tuesday 1st November

Beardy and I agree that since we’re only whizzing to London for a night or two to attend the State Of Craft book party we ought to travel light.  We limit ourselves to our respective Fred Perry bags.  It may come as a surprise to you that we own Fred Perry bags.  We bought them in the sale.  Beardy’s is a black barrel bag with yellow ends and a stripey shoulder strap.  Mine is a plain black leather case – kind of like a doctor’s bag.  Beardy uses his every day.  I’ve only used mine twice.

While I sit on the couch updating my Megabus playlist, I can Beardy open and close drawers in the bedroom.  A few seconds later, he emerges – all packed and ready to go.  I envy boys.

Playlist complete and safely transferred onto my dinky green iShuffley thing, I go next door to pack.  10 minutes later and I’ve packed, unpacked and packed again twice over.  Somehow I find travelling light much more stressful than travelling heavy.

Garry listened to me patiently (albeit with bulgey eyes and half his mouth sucked into his face) as I explained my wardrobe/packing dilemmas.  “I think you ought to transcribe THIS conversation for your blog”, he said once I’d finished.  I can’t remember the conversation word for word and besides, it wasn’t funny – it was serious.  It was serious and very, very important.

Carrie Not The Kind Of Girl You’d Marry’s Packing Dilemmas & London Wardrobe Anxieties

Jeans are bulky and heavy.  I should probably just wear them travelling to save humphing them around. But if I wear them travelling they might get all out of shape from me sitting in them in the same position for 10 hours. The waistband will get all slack and horrible and there’ll be big lumps where my knees have been poking into the fabric.  And what if I spill food on them?  I’ve put salad cream in the packed lunch rolls.  Some salad cream might dribble out and land in my lap.  Then I would be a pair of trousers short of an outfit in London. I don’t have any money to buy replacement trousers and even if I did – I don’t have time to go shopping.  Maybe I ought to just pack the jeans and wear them on the bus home so that it doesn’t matter if they get dirty.

I already know that I’ll wear my birthday frock to the State of Craft book party.  I fold it then roll it and put it in my Fred Perry bag.  I get upset because despite having washed pretty much every item of clothing I own, somehow I’ve missed my mustard birthday tights and I find them lurking in the bottom of the laundry basket, dirty.  I always wear my mustard birthday tights with my birthday frock.  Since it’s too late to wash and dry them,  I pack a green pair of tights and a peach pair of tights  instead.  I’m not happy with either combo but am forced to make do. I am now convinced that London’s crafty cool kids will mock my inability to dress myself and am worried that I might mention  my dirty birthday tights in conversation by accident as I nervously try to justify my questionable dress/tight selections.

Beardy has very thoughtfully washed my blue granny cagoule but I worry that it’s too cold to wear it now.  That was my spring jacket. It’s Autumn now.  Winter, even.  All the buttons on my winter coat have fallen off and the lining is ripped and tangled making it quite difficult to get my arms in the armholes properly.  Quite often I put my arm inside the lining by accident and panic as I wonder where my fingers have gone.  When I don’t lose my hand in the coat innards, I sometimes get stuck in this weird bit of twisted material that bumffles around the fattest part of my upper arm.  It makes me feel like I’m wearing a straight jacket.  If I wear my winter coat (regardless of all the lining/button issues), then I might be warmer but my coat looks rubbish with my jeans.  I’m starting to hate my jeans. And my coat.  I wonder if maybe wearing my fur coat might be an option.  It’s warm.  And it has all its buttons.  The lining of the fur coat is problematic too but I feel that that’s cancelled out by the handy ability to button myself in.  Beardy suggests that maybe I just wear my blue cagoule.  I worry that it doesn’t match my book party outfit and that I will look like a tink at the State of Craft launch.  (It’s at this point Beardy suggests I write this conversation on my blog).

I love my shoes.  I really, really do.  I bought them especially for the Nokia tour and they’ve barely been off my feet since.  Currently, my retro 70s  navy blue mary janes are the only shoes I can wear outdoors on account of my cheapo green boat shoes honking/being leaky and my black winter boots  needing re-heeled.  I have no shoe options.  I get more and more panicky as I realise that, no matter what, I will have to wear my shoes with my jeans.  My shoes don’t match my jeans.  Perhaps I should unpack the jeans.  Again.

An hour, a hissy fit and some sobbing later, I zip my Fred Perry bag and put it in the hall by the door.

I decide to forfeit warmth and take my blue cagoule.  I decide to wear my jeans travelling.

How To Survive The Megabus

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Here I am.  In Glasgow again.  Sitting in my little spot at the kitchen table.  I perch by the window and snoop on my neighbours opposite sometimes (when I’m bored of typing or my wrists start to hurt).  They don’t do anything particularly outrageous really. The neighbours, I mean.  Mainly washing up. Occasionally cooking.  But I do like to give a smiley nod to the fat ned woman that leans out of her bedroom window when she appears in my eyeline every now and again.  I’m also convinced that another top floor neighbour whose house I can see into might be the guy that works in Stereo – but I can never be sure so I’m yet to wave and show him, oven dish in hand,  that thanks to the tasty menu options in his fine workplace, I now roast myself up some sweet potato chips at home. Delicious they are too.   It was raining earlier but there’s blue sky peeping through the clouds now.  Infact – hold on just a sec ’til I pop away and turn off the pendant light.  Don’t need it on now.  The sun’s streaming in.

All in all, it feels quite nice to be back.  We’re always pleased to return to our flat after a wee break away – the squishy carpet, the squishy cat…  Home sweet home.  We had a swell ol’ time in London Town though.  Was a fun trip – not to mention an eye-opening one.

The London Chronicles…

Tuesday:

The Megabus Trip to Mega Town

First up – a ‘lil gripey gripe.  Having travelled Megabus-style hunners o’ times now (it is, for us, the only way to travel don’t you know?!) we’ve come to notice that of all the Megabus staff we encounter – in London, in Manchester, in Preston – the people who work for Megabus in Glasgow’s Buchanan Station are by far, the most unpleasant, rude, verging on (and sometimes explicitly) racist bunch of morons one could hope to avoid in life.  Ok – so we paid tuppence for two return journeys from one point of the country to the other…  And what?  I don’t suppose many customers book budget and expect red carpet, first class, top notch treatment, but jeezoh…  The abuse passengers quietly accept from these dicks is quite, quite bonkers. I think the phrase I’m searching for is Bully Boy Bawbags.  Yup – I think that about sums it up.  Nice one.  Mary Portas would have their guts for garters, I tell ya’.

Never travelled Megabus?  Here are my top tips for survival!

1.  Wear layers.  The Megabus will either be SO hot you think you might faint – or so cold that you turn blue and disembark unable to move your left shoulder.  I always take my woolly shawl with me as a compact – yet cosy emergency blanket. Oh – and I always make sure to have silky smooth armpits when travelling.  Not to increase my aerodynamic properties but incase I need to shed more layers than initially intended and end up sitting in my underwear.

2.  Don’t take your shoes off.  You will be tempted to.  But don’t.  There’s every chance your feet will swell up like sausages and you won’t be able to squeeze your tootsies back into your shoesies when you arrive at your destination.

3.  Break the journey up into little chunks – punctuated by meals and treats.  Travelling from Glasgow to London, the bus departs at 8.30am and arrives at 5.30pm.  Here’s the schedule:

8.30am – 9.30am:  Chitter chatter/outraged grumbling about how poorly you were just treated by the driver/controller + looking out the window.

9.30am – 10am:  Breakfast.  Pack something nice – a little treat.  You might need to travel like a hobo, but organising a nice menu will make you feel better.  Pan au chocolat, yoghurt and fruit are ideal.  Don’t drink ANYTHING with breakfast.  You don’t want to be running to the bathroom this early on.

10am – 12noon:  Read a little something.  I like to save up fancy magazines for a few months so I have a nice tidy bundle to work my way through in one go.  Megabus mornings are ideal times to get your nose stuck into some pretty publications.

12noon – 1.30pm: Watch a few episodes of your favourite tv show on your mobile phone/your fancypants friend’s mobile phone (ALWAYS take a headphone splitter with you).

1.30pm – 2pm:  Lunch time!  Your favourite sandwich + mini pasta pot and some more fruit will see you through for the next bit of the journey.  Lunch time is one of my favourite Megabus times.  Don’t pack anything smelly.  You don’t want to be the dick that pisses everyone off when they open their tuna salad/spicy chicken pitta pocket/cheese and onion Monster Munch.

2pm – 4pm:  It’s at this point Beardy usually immerses himself in a movie on the ol’ laptop while I pop on my headphones and dance/jiggle around in my seat, getting excited every time I spot a farm animal, primrose or truck driver.

4pm – 5pm:  Not to seem anti-social or to have other passengers think you’ve fallen out with your travel companion/you are being trafficked via Megabus against your will – you might want to engage in some chitter chatter.  Around this time you start to see little bits of London anyways so you have stuff to get giddy about.  If you’re thirsty, it’s now safe to have a little drink.

5pm – 5.30pm: By this time you are definitely driving through London.  Get your upbeat tunios on, sit forward in your seat like a small child and gawp out of the window at the bright lights.  You will arrive in Victoria station.  Your legs may have seized up and you will probably have a headache.  You arrive just in time to catch rush hour mayhem.  To avoid, swing on into the Shakespeare – a hideous (and slightly smelly) bar just opposite the station.  Buy an expensive pint of lager and hide downstairs until the madness subsides.  If you can, get the bus to your destination – not the tube.

4.  When you notice the girl opposite you start to wrap a Mother’s Day gift up in a ripped up Tesco bag, you will want to laugh out loud.  Don’t.  Just turn to face the window,  open your mouth wide and kind of hold your breath until the hysterical urge passes.

5.  In the unfortunate event you need to use the ‘toilet and washroom’, go armed with a stock of proper tissue, hand sanitiser and something sweet smelling and skooshable.

6.  If a guy boards the bus during your stop in Preston, shouting a story involving any of/any combination of these things – daughter in a wheelchair, junkie, robbed, stranded – and essentially asking the bus to have a whipround in his honour – DO NOT GIVE HIM ANY MONEY.  Not even when he cries.  And he will. What a scamster!

Enjoy your trip ;)

Image borrowed from Dooby Brain