EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALOctober 7, 1998
Near Risca, Wales
Finding Alfi
Last night I saw a documentary about a British team of women sailors
attempting to break a record sailing from England around Africa to Tierra Del Fuego and
back up to England again. The team put a video camera in the bathroom and recorded their
thoughts on the voyage. Th ship's mast broke several hundred miles off of the coast
of Chile.
We get up at 8 and finish our packing in time to catch the 10:30am
train to Exeter. We board the train and watch a scramble for "good
seats"—the ones with the little tables attached that are facing each other. I
settle for what is left after we haul our luggage to the platform…two regular but
quite adequate side by side ones. Rich struggles with the bags and gets them organized
into shelves and soon we are out of the station and I am fast asleep.
When I awake we are nearly at Exeter and I am reminded of the beauty of
grass. The sun is shining and the green rolling hills of the Devon countryside are a
relief from the dismal grey of the London streets.
The key to moving around in a speeding train is to not seriously injure
yourself or someone else as you bob from side to side down the aisle. The miniscule and
sporadically placed handles on the tops of the seats are virtually useless when you
can’t reach them. You can't reach them because you have landed on an unsuspecting
commuter's lap. I retrieve two cups of hot chocolate from the dining car and return to
Rich, but not before I stop at the baggage shelf to locate some Digestives. Little do I
realize that because the baggage shelf is situated at the door to the adjoining car that
as I stand there frantically rummaging for my cookies, the entire car is watching the door
behind me open and slam shut like a vacuum on the half-second. I finally looked up to
acknowledge my performance. My eyes meet with Rich’s. He is staring at me with a
bewildered half-grin. I hear myself laugh out loud. The passengers stare through me and at
the vacuum-door with disapproval.
I’ve been Lucky In Love, and luckily for me it’s the little
things that count. I return to my seat and Rich gets up and effortlessly transports those
cookies back to the safety of me and my seated bottom. This is when the conductor, on the
loudspeaker informs us that we will be arriving at the station in Exeter in five minutes.
Rich and I are now forced to commit masochistic torture with two cups of scorching liquid
in a matter of a minute. Before we know it our tongues are burnt and we are chucking
our bags on the landing.
We negotiate the next phase of my father's instructions on how to get
to Newton-Poppleford from the train station to the bus station, to the Oak Tree Garage
with six bags and a guitar. A taxi driver offers to take us there himself.
(My father carries considerabley fewer pairs of underwear). Next thing
we’re on a pleasant drive through the countryside in a speeding minicab and I’m
rolling down the window and soaking in the sunshine and wind.
The Oak Tree Garage is situated behind a very old and rusty petrol pump
and a line-up of Porsches at the bottom of the hill at Newton-Poppleford. Crispin Manners
is the bushy-bearded proprietor with a friendly scrowl. He has a year-old Great Dane-Boxer
Cross named Woody under his feet and an Airedale at home. It is all coming together for
Rich and I as we dump our load in front of Alfi, the 1978 Alfa Romeo Alfetta passed from
my father's travels to ours. It was so silly of us to ask ourselves; "Why on
Earth did Bob leave the car WAY OUT HERE?"
We load up and settle things with Crispin, take a few digital
photographs and start down the road for Sidmouth to do the licencing. Alfi’s
familiar smell and energetic clanking hum gives as much confidence as serendipidy will
afford and Rich maneuveres his way down the treacherously narrow road to the town with the
post office.
A stop at The Chattery, a tea room in Sidmouth that provides a
pot of tea, four cumulous cloud-like scones (no raisins) and a soup bowl overflowing with
strawberry jam.
This is the part where we always mess up at the beginning of our road
trips. We drive too long into the evening and then have a terrible time finding vacancies
when it is getting dark. It always takes us a few evenings to fine-tune the hour of
checking in. We take the toll bridge over the Severn and into Wales and promptly start our
bed search in the town of Risca, just north of Newport. After a few failed attempts, a
scratchy lady with a large driveway and a meat-locker bathroom shows us a little bed and a
little sink and asks us what we will be having for breakfast. I sit up in the little bed
beside the little sink, thinking of falling alseep and fried bread.
