I’m hoping to bring you news from Harland & Wolfe in a short while; I am just waiting for the photos to upload after changing a setting on my phone which had become unset somehow, so my gallery wasn’t communicating with the cloud where I keep the images before sending them to the laptop and… It was so much easier when we had prints and albums, though not so easy to share them with the rest of the world. Anyway… Come on a short Symi walk with me while I tell you a story.
Sorry if you’ve heard this before, but what I just wrote reminded me of it. Picture it: Dover, early 1980s, and I applied for a job in Wales (Dolgellau, to be precise and no, I don’t know why I did it, but it looked like a lovely place). A few days later, a letter[1] arrived telling me I had an interview, the day after tomorrow. Gosh, I thought, that doesn’t leave me long to travel the 280 miles from the southeast of England to the Snowdonia National Park, how will I get there? At the time, I had a Morris Minor[2] and knew that wouldn’t make the trip so I had to go by train. However…
Having made phone calls[3] to the local railway station to discover the timetables, I discovered I would have to stay in Cardiff overnight. Hmm, Booking.com was a thing of… well, wasn’t even a thing or a thought, and the only way to find a hotel in advance was to find a newspaper or magazine, visit a travel agent, or… Well, I didn’t know, but I did know that my brother was at University in Cardiff, and better still, I had his address in Splott. Only, he didn’t have a phone (student, you see), and a letter would take too long, so, ‘Ah ha!’ I thought. ‘A telegram,’ so I phoned the operator to ask if I could send a telegram.
‘Sorry, m’dear, British Telecom don’t no longer do them telegrams.’
‘Really?’
‘Aye. After 139 year, the service stopped back end last September, eighty-two, so, sorry, me luv’r, I can’t be of no assistance to ye.’
I have no idea why she was Cornish. But still… what to do?
All I could do was go and hope for the best. ‘I’ll turn up on his doorstep and hope he’s in,’ I thought as I wandered to the railway station the next day. ‘Hopefully, he’s not on a field trip, but if he is, maybe one of his housemates will believe I am who I am, and let me stay so I can travel on the next day, and arrive… Ah ha!’ An idea occurred.
Cut to 6pm that evening when I step from the London train onto Cardiff soil and Lo! There is the kinsperson waiting for me. Despite the embarrassment I’d caused him, he let me stay, we spent the evening drinking Brains Mild, and the next day, I journeyed onwards via Barmouth, feeling surprisingly smug and non-hungover. How?
I’d passed an Interflora. I popped in and asked, if I sent the cheapest bunch of flowers they had, when would it arrive? and the assistant told me, midday, or whenever I wanted after that time, so I sent him a bouquet with a message, ‘Arriving station 6pm, staying the night, meet me.’ And, despite his housemates taking the petunia because he’d got flowers from a bloke, it worked. So, there’s a tip for you, though these days, all you need is in eth palm of your hand.
The trip back also went without incident, except for when I had to change trains somewhere among the mountains, and alighted to find myself alone with only one other person on a single-track platform surrounded by hills and nothing else. ‘Is this the right place to change for Wherever I’m going next?’ I asked, to which the man replied, ‘Now let me see. What day is it?’
Oh, and I didn’t get nor want the job.
[1] Letter: Personal communication often written by hand, sometimes typed, sent through the post.
[2] Morris Minor: Antique car that ran on prayer.
[3] Phone calls made by putting a finger in a dial and turning a combination of numbers to ask a real person because no-one was online back then.
