A NEW DECADE It is now 6:15 in the evening and I have been away from Linda for only 14 hours yet it feels like much longer. The last I saw of her was her sad and lonely face looking out of the National Express bus as it sped away from Victoria Coach Station taking her back to Corton and certain uncertainty of a new job.
We came to London town on Saturday morning by bus from Frome which landed us in the city at 11AM. We caught the Circle Line round to Earls Court and booked into the Hunters Lodge Hotel, the same hotel we stayed in when we arrived, tired and broke, back from Africa last year. From the hotel we caught the Underground over to Lambeth making a detour to the St Thomas’s nurses hostel to look for my Visa card which I discovered I had lost on Linda’s birthday. It wasn’t there so I must’ve lost it on the street or perhaps (hopefully) it was thrown out by mistake with our rubbish. Anyway I cancelled it on Friday night and rang Joe to tell him to arrange a new one for me.
At the Red Lion we picked up our tickets for the Fleetwood Mac concert and had a quick drink then made our way over to Baker Street where we caught the metropolitan line out to Wembley. The open air concert, which started at 3 pm, was brilliant. The first act was the Liverpool band River City People then the hateful Daryl Hall and John Oates played for an hour. Jethro Tull then came on for an hour and a half and they were amazing. They played a few new songs and a lot of the old stuff, Ian Anderson prancing and leaping like a crazed demon and standing on one leg as he grunted and screeched into his flute.
Then at 8:30 Fleetwood Mac roared into life for a 2 1/2 hour show with three encores and they were brilliant. When the concert finished we caught a free bus back into the city and caught the tube back to Earls Court.
Linda cried softly against me when we woke up yesterday morning, the prospect of us splitting up and her starting a new job without me scaring her a little. After we checked out of the hotel we went over to Marble Arch where we saw the brilliant movie Diehard 2: Die Harder, then went over to the Red Line for a last drink with Jenny and Louie who are off to Africa soon.
Then we walked hand-in-hand over to Westminster Station and caught the train round to Victoria. We kept our goodbyes to a minimum and Linda got on the bus. I waited at the corner and waved to her all the way up the street until the bed the bus sped off taking my love away.
Later I caught the 8PM train to Pulborough and when it arrived I got a taxi out to the farm. Today we have mucked around various jobs and I haven’t been happy at all. Soon I will ring Linda to find out how her first day went and how she is…
I had to go with Duncan’s wife Claire to pick up a horse at 9:45 pm so I rang Linda for a quick chat and told her I’d ring back later. We had to go almost to Bognor Regis to pick up the horse and it was almost 11:30 when we got back. I rang Linda again and we talked for half an hour. She wasn’t very happy about her new job or being alone and nor was I but we both felt better having talked to each other.
CurseOfTheTraveller 