Story instalments
The first experience Cara remembered of her move to London was the smell of sick in the Travelodge room at South Mimms services. Too tired to move the already sleeping children she’d had to go to sleep with that smell on every tired breath, anger brewing towards the supposedly convenient accommodation chain they’d chosen.
In the morning, excitement at the move into their new house had mingled with the thrill of seizing the opportunity to cross out and initial the amount of the room cost on all copies of the Travelodge bill as she complained about her young family having to sleep in a room smelling of sick. She wasn’t sure of the validity of this endeavour but the quickly exchanged look of concern on the faces of the staff behind the desk was satisfaction enough.
And sure enough later, there’d been no charge on their bank statement.
She’d won. Something. Maybe!
—
Interesting!
Will this be an ongoing story??
There isn’t a Travelodge at South Mimms Services, its a Days Inn.
Thanks for your comments – yes this will be an ongoing story.
Bye for now
Then boxes, brown walls of floor to ceiling boxes in every room, (except the kitchen – which did not have much more than a box space between the cooker, sink, and back door), of the very small 3 bed semi, as they tried to shoehorn the contents of their large 4 bed townhouse into their allocated ‘on-site’ college house. The two removal men couldn’t see how it was going to work. (The older one drinking gallons of tea in the heat, his younger assistant drinking his own bottles of coke. A generation thing probably. Cara knew which one she identified with.) But then they hadn’t spent hours with graph paper and tracing paper and cut out scaled furniture shapes lovingly puzzling out the most efficient way to get all their possessions into a new house.
Anyway, Cara hadn’t been able to plan the actual operation of unpacking; hadn’t accounted for that, and this whole unpacking operation became very complicated and drawn out and seemed to require some sort of 3D spatial computer programme. So many dead ends before at last something could be put away in an accessible empty storage space.
But the urgency of decreasing the packing boxes was matched only by the urgency of making new friends. Trying not to miss out on any socializing opportunities; not to get left behind in the thinly veiled ‘first year’ clamour to become acquainted with all Beech Hill had to offer. Freshers week.
Story instalment 3
Cara had been looking forward to Beech Hill for months now, ever since, in fact, a trip back to their old church in Sheffield. Re-acquainting herself with the claustrophobic and intense arena played out in the ‘coffee hall’ the stage set was emptying, and she was acutely aware of her presence – an intruder – she’d been in the room too long, she wasn’t a member of the church any more – not that she’d ever really felt a member then.