While the rest of the world, or of Britain at least, watches the Olympic opening ceremony, I am Sleepering. And there’s no place I’d rather be.
I’m on the Caledonian Sleeper to be precise, one of the finest trains known to modern man. For a properly mouthwatering account of just why this is so, you can’t do better than read what the Man in Seat 61 has to say about it (Seat 61). However, I’ll give you my personal point of view here.
It’s a train more magical than anything JK Rowling (with the greatest respect) could conjure up: it is a train that transports its passengers on an almost miraculous journey from crowded man-made ugliness to vast and majestic natural beauty, it provides cosy cocoons of cameraderie in the most cheerless of landscapes, and, last but absolutely not least, it provides haggis and whisky all night to the most romantic of all clickety-clack soundtracks; it shakes, rattles and rolls the soul.
This mythical beast of a locomotive lurks at London’s Euston Station for a while before taking flight. Euston being one of the ugliest and most soulless of the capital’s mainline halts, a fact which is made all the more painful by the fact that it could have been so much better: the destruction of the Euston Arch in 1961 is seen by many (or at least by many of those who’ve actually heard of it these days) as one of the worst of many architectural travesties of the 1960s. But from the moment you leap over the cavernous gap between the platform and the train, the insolubrious Camden concrete world begins to dissolve, helped by the fact that there is a good stock of decent whisky aboard.
Whatever your final destination, it’s hard not to feel excited, but tonight we are bound for Fort William, which means that tomorrow morning we will pass through some of the most stunning and soul-exfoliating country known to man, the antithesis to Euston and all its demons. It also means that we don’t have to be out of our cabin at stupid o’clock tomorrow morning, but can savour every sip of our styrofoam tea while we enjoy the scenery (and sticker dolly books, if Little Miss Macnab has anything to do with it).
As if the promise of this treat weren’t enough in its own right, there’s also the excitement of being on a “special sort of train”. It’s a train that has all the best bits that trains had in books you read when you were little (and in my case, in films you watched and on websites you read when you were big). It has a bar/ lounge carriage where passengers sit and relax at tables, on sofas, even talk to each other, just the place for “Strangers on a Train” to meet and plan fantastical feats of fiendishness. It’s a bright haven amidst the darkness that speeds by outside. And it serves haggis, which, on a hot July night feels like being allowed a mince pie out of season, faintly naughty and perfect washed down with whisky.
And now, pleasantly satiated with both haggis and whisky, I am being rocked to sleep by the gentle motion of the train, with the promise of breakfast and breathtaking views in the morning.
And I can pretend to be Wendy Hillier on the way to her fantasy wedding in my favourite film of all time: “I know where I’m going”. I imagine my wedding dress hanging on the door in place of threadbare cords and creased linen shirt….and try to ignore the faint aroma of neoprene and welly emanating from somewhere under the bunk. And perhaps there’ll be a dashing Laird…. in a kilt….
The only problem, which keeps shaking me from the tartan tinted reveries, is that Little Miss Macnab is sharing my bunk, and is pushing me out. I have had to wedge myself against my impossibly large suitcase to retain even a fighting chance of bed….oh well…not long until I can get up and feast my eyes on the lochs…
mrsmacnab 