May Day ! May Day !
I pulled out of Paris on the Eurostar and glanced at the station clock.
It said 9.11
Hurtling towards the Channel Tunnel, white knuckles gripping the armrest of my window seat.
Window seat ? Point ?
The rational and the irrational going at it hammer and tongs in my frontal lobe, stomach doing cartwheels.
Why did I get on this train ?
Which is worse, I ask myself, 36 thousand feet up or a couple of thousand feet down?
Nothing but empty sky between you and the ground or a huge body of water and hundreds of tons of ocean floor bearing down on you ?
Blocked ears from being in a pressurised metal tube hurtling through the sky or blocked ears from being in a metal tube far too deep underground ?
No escape from either….
Unless you stop thinking about it and read the paper.
Ah, here comes breakfast.
I was in first class and assured that breakfast was ‘compris’, so, I hadn’t bothered to buy my last genuine croissant or brioche at the Gare du Nord. Not even a café crème.
Which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
Breakfast was just like on a plane – only worse.
Cold, stale croissant, which - like all souvenirs of Paris – was probably made in China. Aeroplane coffee with France’s favourite milk – UHT.
(In case I haven’t mentioned this before, the French all drink long-life milk. Not sure why. No-one seems to have an explanation).
I ate like a woman who is about to die in a train accident.
Had seconds.
‘How long do we actually spend in the tunnel ?’ I asked the beautiful Christine, ‘cabin supervisor’.
About twenty minutes.
Oh. Well, that’s manageable, I thought.
‘And do your ears hurt ?’ I asked.
‘Not when you’re in the tunnel,’ she said. ‘But later, quite a lot.’
Aaaaagggghhhhh !!!!!!
I want to get off this train !
I have very sensitive ears ! I’m an artiste ! I need my ears for my important work of listening to myself talk and sing ! I don’t want to have any pain !
I decided not to ask if anyone had ever had a heart attack brought on by the pressure of being underground in the tunnel.
Twenty minutes, I kept saying. I can time that.
Maybe if I go to the toilet now – which by the way I would really like to do – I won’t even notice us going in to the tunnel because there won’t be any lights on in there.
Excellent idea. Even though I was fully loaded up with the breakfast tray I manoeuvred my way out of the seat, squeezed past the trolley and into the loo.
Was I just imagining that everyone was staring at me ?
Or were all their eyes popping out of their heads with fear.
Once in the loo I suddenly thought, well, yes I might not notice the fact that we’re in the tunnel because there’s no windows in here, but what about the excruciating pain in my ears !!!
Back past the trolley, back under my breakfast tray.
We seemed to still be in the country.
Oceans of non-drought-stricken green, punctuated with those annoying psychedelic yellow fields of canola were swishing past the window.
An occasional tunnel and you thought, here we go ! This is it ! And your ears popped and everything…But then you were out the other end and surrounded by more greens.
My ticket said – depart Paris 9.15, arrive Ashford 10.05.
Forty-five minutes minus the twenty in the tunnel - we should be in it by now.
I take another look at the ticket. Maybe it’s ‘arrive 1.05’ – as in p.m. ? 4 hours of suspense. It was gonna kill me !
Then suddenly the train began to slow, ever so slightly.
My lovely hosts in Hildesheim, Ben and Sabina, had related to me a horror story of being stuck in the chunnel on the Eurostar. The train had ground to a halt, all the lights went out, people were screaming and crying. Another train had to be summoned to pull it back out again…and….
The train was definitely slowing.
Oh. My. God.
What was worse than hurtling towards the chunnel ?
Hurtling towards it only to stop just inside it or….half….way…
We were definitely in the chunnel now.
Moving along at a steady pace.
It was kind of quiet.
Gee, The Guardian was running some good stories that day.
You could ask me anything about the local council elections and the battle for the job as Mayor of London and I could tell you everything.
And, just as suddenly, we were out the other end.
And my ears weren’t hurting.
They didn’t even pop.
It was a totally painless experience.
Apart from the breakfast.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK //