Writing a life more ordinary

When we stopped owning a car at Christmas I thought it would make good material for an occasional blog series. I’d owned a car for more than 20 years and have always enjoyed driving. What would our lives be like without one?

The truth is we don’t have any stories to tell. We get buses and taxis. A few things are annoying: we can’t get to the tip (household waste recycling centre) easily; there are no random trips to garden centres; we’re restricted to where we can get to by train or bus.

But most of the time, life carries on as it did before. I walk more or don’t nip out for something on a whim.

We go on train holidays. When we went to Switzerland and Italy last year I wrote about the experience. People said they were looking forward to reading about our next adventure; I didn’t write about it.

Why? Because while we had a lovely time, I didn’t think it was that interesting for other people. It was literally what we did on our holidays.

And when I ask myself why I thought it didn’t have anything to offer other people, it was because nothing went ‘wrong’.

We didn’t book our train from Perpignon to Barcelona early enough so ended up with four seats scattered through the train. No good with children. When we got on board, we found someone was already in the two seats together we would have put the kids in. We ended up in the corridor. There were two pull down seats no-one else was using so we put the children on those and we stood. It’s not a long journey. Not a problem after all.

Coming back to the UK from Barcelona, we nearly missed our train to Paris. We underestimated the distance to the platform once we got through baggage scan. But we got the train, all was well (although, my husband would like you to know he nearly hyperventilated to death).

I couldn’t see the angle. Maybe I should have looked harder.

Conversely, when we went on holiday to Wales this year, the journey was terrible! Our train from Cambridge to London was cancelled. Thankfully there was another that would get us to London Paddington in time for our connection. We had booked our train from London to Cardiff, including seats. But as we arrived at Paddington, we found that train was cancelled too.

There wasn’t another direct train for two hours. We would miss our connection to the Tenby train, which also ran every two hours. A long day stretched out in front of us.

Then we were told to get the train to Reading that was leaving in a couple of minutes and change. The whole platform seemed to head for that train. We all stood in the corridor. It’s only half an hour. The train driver apologised that they couldn’t get the train to Cardiff due to leave just as we arrived to stay and pick us up.

But as our door opened, the Cardiff train was still on the other side of the platform. We ran.

It was the train we should have been on. We were by the carriage we should have been in. But our seats had been taken. We stood uncomfortably from London to Cardiff. At one point a bike propped up in the luggage storage space fell on us. At another, we’d ended up with things wedged so that I couldn’t get my feet fully on the floor so was leaning against the opposite wall on tip toes.

We arrived late into Cardiff and nipped out of the station to get some lunch before our connection to Tenby. The train was mildly late, and got steadily later. Then we arrived in Carmarthen.

I went to university in Lampeter and have always been bitter about the fact that the bus left Carmarthen a few minutes before the train arrived. This meant a long wait on a rainy station platform every term.

This time we should have stopped at Carmathen long enough for people to get on and off the train before we were on our way again. But we waited. And we waited. And we waited. Then there was an announcement that a member of train crew was due to arrive on the next train, which would be arriving in 40 minutes.

Eventually, after 9 hours of travelling, we arrived in Tenby.

How come we can get all the way up to the highest station in Europe, then to Venice, and down to Rome without a problem but getting to Tenby is uncomfortable and stressful?

So I had a story to tell. But it’s not the story I wanted and generally, I expect the train journey is fine. We just had a run of bad luck.

Travel writers are perfectly able to write about their experiences without something ‘bad’ happening.

What I’ve taken away from these experiences is that there is something to be said about writing about ordinary life. It’s ok to write about experiences where you had a nice time. In fact, if we stopped only sharing the things that are out of the ordinary, we would all have a much better expectation of what is ‘normal’; what we can expect from situations; what other people are really doing.

It’s not dull, it’s real. In a world that constantly tells us to be authentic online, that’s probably the best we can do.