The Trials of a Commuter

I drove to work yesterday. That’s a standard practice for millions of British workers but it hasn’t been for me. Not since my company moved down to London 3 and half years ago. In that time I have only driven to work 3 times previously, so I enjoyed the variety that driving gave me yesterday.

When I used to commute to Cambridge I got bored of having to rely on the unpredictability of trains, train drivers, fellow commuters, train tracks, British weather and those who thought that jumping in front of a train would be a good way to end it all. Not being in control of my destiny (or at least my journey back home) frustrated me. When I got a job in Peterborough and had to drive for the first time it was exciting. Certainly scary as despite passing my test 2 years previously I hadn’t driven regularly since then and definitely not for long distances. I literally had to teach myself to drive again.

But once I got the hang of it driving was exciting. I am by no means whatsoever a car fanatic; people who talk about cars bore me. But once I got over the nerves and anxiety I found driving enjoyable. I enjoyed the fact that I was in control of my own destiny (or at least my own destination) and the sheer buzz that I got from being in control of a potential one tonne death machine. It is testament to the wonders of the human subconscious that millions of people can drive harmoniously every day, without incident and without even really thinking about it.

The fundamental difference between driving to work and getting the train to work is adrenalin. Driving along a winding fenland road, an icy river to your left and an articulated lorry coming at you on your right produces adrenalin. Overtaking a tractor at 50 miles an hour in fourth gear (I drive a not-even-a-one-litre Vauxhall Corsa so need to drop down a gear if I have to accelerate quickly) in fog with ever brightening foglights coming at you produces adrenalin. Making a split second decision on whether you should pull out at a junction and then having to press the accelerator pedal hard down to the floor when you realise you probably shouldn’t have as there is a much faster car behind you produces adrenalin. Adrenalin is fun. It makes us feel alive. I am by no means an adrenalin junkie but I enjoy the small thrills of driving my (very modest) car. Sitting on a train for hours every day does not produce adrenalin. It produces the opposite of adrenalin.

What’s the opposite of adrenalin? Calmness?  Depression? Lethargy? Probably lethargy.  Sitting on the same train for hours a day is bloody tiring! Whist it is easy to just sit there and be transported to your destination as you do whatever stationary activity you like to best – reading, writing, listing to music, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, knitting, doing your makeup, marking your student’s work, doing your own work, or playing on your smartphone (by far the most popular choice of my fellow commuters) – it is often just so, well boring.

Sitting on a train for hours every day really takes it out of you. For the last 3 and half years I have spent nearly 4 hours a day travelling to and from work. People ask me how I do it. People ask me if I am mad (I’m not quite sure if they are actually joking or not when they ask this). People ask me why I do it. The last question is the hardest one for me to answer.

Hardness, that is what it comes down to – you have to be mentally very hard to be able to take this daily punishment for a prolonged period of time. I see it in the eyes of my fellow long-distance commuters – the same steely determination, the same black rings around their eyes, and the same sense of resignation that this is how their life is and that it will probably always be like this.

 Image: the solemn faces of every day commuters

But it’s not all bad of course. If like me then you enjoy solitary activities (reading, writing, listening to music, attempting to play the guitar), then the long distance train commute is like escaping into your own private world every day. I’ve done almost everything it is possible to do on a train – read many books, magazines and newspapers, listened to hours of music, listened to dozens of podcasts, written blogs, done work (official and unofficial), watched films, played games on my iPad, made calls to friends and family, chatted to fellow commuters, attempted to sleep (with their horrid florescent lighting, hard seats and minimal leg room it is as if trains have been designed specifically so it is impossible to sleep on them) and messed around with the various phones I’ve owned over the years. I would have liked to have been able to have practiced guitar on the train but that would have had to involve the guarantee of a completely empty carriage to myself every day.

Variety is the spice of life however and despite my attempts to add as much variation to my train journeys as possible it is always good to have a change. That’s why the rare thrill of driving to work gave me so much enjoyment yesterday. The best bit? The car stereo. My stereo is as modest as my car but I still had great fun in selecting the 2 CDs that would accompany on my 2 hour round trip to Peterborough and back. From my Blur 21 box set (released to mark the 21^st anniversary of the band 2 years ago) I chose the Modern Life Is Rubbish rarities CD for the way there and the studio album itself for the way back. Motoring up the A47 in beautiful sunshine I got particular enjoyment from blasting out the Wassailing Song and tapping the steering wheel to the 3/4 time of this unique song. It was certainly a unique experience.

The reason why I drove to work yesterday? Because the ever-changing powers that be in my company have decided to move my team back to Peterborough from London. So it looks like I am going to have to get used to driving again: I know that I’ll enjoy it to start with but eventually it will become a chore. That’s how it was before for me – after 2 and half years of driving for nearly 2 hours a day I welcomed the change that commuting on a train gave me. Now after 3 and a half years of commuting by train and Tube for nearly 4 hours a day I welcome the relief and difference that the shorter car journey will give me. Despite the relocation it looks like I will still get to visit London regularly for my job – perhaps not as much as I would like to but still enough to break up my week.

I look forward to revisiting my CD collection and blasting out my favourite albums in my car, and to also being able to continue enjoying the solitary hours on the train where I can read and write. It’s been very hard work to get to where I am today – the physical and mental pain, the frustration, the sleep deprivation, the reliance on caffeine and paracetamol, the missed opportunities, the sacrifices, the swallowing of pride, the sheer stamina required to get through it all. Finally after all of that I feel like my hard work is starting to pay off.

Why I Love Books

It’s Valentine’s Day so I thought I’d write about my love of…books! When I say I love books, I really do – I have an emotional attachment to them and cannot imagine my life without them. I love everything about them – how they look, how they feel, even how they smell. I love how they look stood together on a bookshelf and one of my proudest ever purchases was my recent shiny white IKEA bookshelf, where finally after years of being anonymously stacked in cupboards and any free spaces, I now have a space to admire my book collection.

 Image: my book (and music) collection proudly displayed on my IKEA shelving unit

One of my dreams is to have a house where there is a massive wall that has built in shelves full of books. It would take a lifetime’s dedication to book buying to fill it but that sounds good to me. I regret selling, giving away and lending (to people who never returned them) many of the books that I have read – my current collection is of course only a fraction of all the books I have ever read. A person’s bookshelf tells you a lot about them – mine has everything from sports and music biographies (lots of cricketers and 90s musicians) to modern classics (1984, American Psycho), football programmes (games I have been to and some from the year I was born) to educational books (from website management for my job to the brilliant Succeed For Yourself by Richard Denny).

I love exploring other people’s bookshelves and whenever I visit my mum I usually find myself picking up a book she inherited from her mum – the Modern Housewife's Encyclopaedia. Published in the early 1950’s, it is a brilliant instruction manual for the ‘modern’ housewife – well the housewife from the 1950’s. There are instructions on how the modern housewife should behave towards her husband and even better there are illustrations to explain the point. My favourite of these is of the husband mowing the lawn and smoking a pipe whilst the wife is in the kitchen wearing a pinafore and getting dinner ready. I think it is beautiful. It is a historical document of how people lived (or at least were expected to live) but more than that it is a physical piece of history. When I pick up the book it is like I am connecting with my nana. I am holding something that she once held. The orange staining of the pages is from the cigarettes that she smoked. It is the closest thing I have to being able to travel back in time and understand how my nana lived her life.

A few years ago I discovered an even more precious book than this. After my nana died, my granddad carried on living in their council house until his death 10 years later. My uncle then took over the tenancy until he then died 8 years after that. Helping my mum to clear out the house I found a very exciting discovery – my nana’s diary from 1983. I don’t know why my nana kept a diary in 1983, and as far as I know she never kept one from any other year, but I am very glad that she did. I burnt my arm in 1983 and thanks to her diary I am now able to know exactly when it happened. More importantly I have an insight into my nana’s life – daily trips to the shops, cooking every day, worrying about her son (my uncle) and the hard work that she did every day to keep her house in order. It sounds like a very boring existence and it probably was. I felt quite sad for my nana when I finished reading it.

My love of books is down to my mum and I will always be grateful to her from that. She read to me and encouraged me to read. Most significantly my mum used to work part-time in a library. Being a single mother my mum was unable to organise or afford to pay for anyone to look after me when she worked during the school holidays so instead I used to hang out in the library all day. The children’s book section of Gainsborough Library in Ipswich was like a home from home to me in the early 90s and I read a lot of books there. I also learnt about categorising books and even the Dewey catalogue system, I used to stamp books for customers and helped put the books away correctly. The most memorable book I read from this time was called Jeremy Blew It. Naturally I picked it for the title but I enjoyed the story – from what I remember it was set in America and was about Jeremy and his friend Yo-less (so called because he never said ‘yo’) as they negotiated their way through the challenges of High School.

Children’s books are magical things as they open up the wonder and beauty of books to children. If I ever have the pleasure of having a child of my own then I will make sure that they have a bookshelf with as many classic children’s books as I can fill it with. From Spot Says Woof to Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis I would get great pleasure out of passing on the love of books to the next generation. 

Blyton’s Secret Seven and Famous Five Books and Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia books really connected with me when I was a child. The books were regrettably probably sold at car boot sales for pennies – I wish I had kept them instead as would love to pick them up again today. One of the few children’s books I still have is called the Book of Myths and Legends. It was a favourite of mine in my early teens and has been read so much that the spine and cover has completely fallen off. Picking it up again takes me back to my early teens and reading the book at a time that I should have been asleep. Over the years I wrote little notes in it so it’s great to look at it now and get an insight into my younger self.

Because that is the thing that most connects me to books – their physical presence. That’s why I can’t get into e-books. I have tried – I have Kindle installed on my iPad and have downloaded some of the classic novels that you can get for free. But I just can’t get into it. I want to hold a book, I want to feel the pages as I turn them, and I want to feel a connection with it. I just don’t get that with e-books. I think they’re a great invention but they aren’t for me. That’s because I love books. Not just reading. I love books and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.