Rather than drive up to Logan and pay to leave the car in the long term lot I thought I’d get the MBTA train. The station is only minutes form my house and dad’s hotel is opposite Back Bay station so it was a rather simple equation.
Whenever I go back and forward (I say this like I am an international jetsetter- I’ve been back and forward twice) I take a massive suitcase. It’s not often full on the way out (though this time it has a guitar in it- anther story) but I like to have the option to the bring stuff back to the US.
Having discovers the bargain gems of Old Navy, Forever 21 and Target I’m pretty set for shopping destinations here in the States. But I do pine for a couple of old favourites back home. I also love that everything I wear from Primark, Matalan or Tesco gets so many compliments out here and sounds very exotic when I reply to the requests for its provenance with ‘I picked it up in England’.
So my suitcase is giant, and because there was a sale on at Matalan when I bought it, I also have the matching carry on size wheelie bag. They are also pink. Very pink. I’m not really a pink, girly girl but I do seem to own a lot of pink stuff and whenever there is a purchase option I choose pink. The laptop I am now writing on is pink.
I’ve gotten the train before but only in the other direction, arriving at Providence from Boston. But knowing that you buy your MBTA tickets from the Le France café, rather than the ticket booth, and that they only take cash, which is le stupid, I felt I had it cracked.
Being an hour early (I’m compulsively inappropriately early for most things) I set up camp, I said the bag was big, on a bench with a clear view of the departure board to await the track number. The café guy said the track number would be display about ten minutes before the train got in so I had just over an hour to kill. Ok so I got their ninety minutes early. Obsessive.
A fair amount of time was spent people watching until there was an awkward moment with a guy who thought I was checking him out whilst I was actually squinting through my prescription sunglasses at the departure board. The constant switching of prescription sunglasses to normal glasses is such a faff, particularly when your handbag is as large and filled with old receipts and notebooks as mine is. I do sometimes worry I look a bit diva-ish wearing my sunglasses in places like Stop and Shop but then people hear my accent and start covertly following me around the aisles because they think I might be famous. So when I finally accepted I would have the change glasses to read the board, and the guy realised I wasn’t playing a drawn out game of eye flirting I was just poorly sighted, I felt I should move along.
A quick flick through the soppy book selection at the station shop, whose aisles were ridiculously close together for a shop that expects to host people that have luggage, I was back to my bench in the waiting room. The platform number was on the board. My compulsion to be early for everything was a bit narked I had missed seeing it pop up but I was off, trundling to the elevator a good half hour before the train was due to arrive.
Arriving on the platform devoid of anyone, I mean anyone- it was like a post-apocalyptic scene, i parked myself on the correct side to await the train. About ten minutes passed and no fellow passengers had joined me. I began to worry.
I am a complete sheep when it comes to public transport. I like to be where the masses are. If I am alone I immediately feel I have gotten it completely wrong and am in fact waiting for the freight trains arrival that will swiftly take me to Chicago or something. I really wanted to go back up to the platform and check but I also did want to look stupid and be recognised as that girl that prematurely headed to the platform and got it WRONG.
‘Don’t be so self-centred’ I hear you cry, ‘no one would have been taking that much notice of you’. It’s not that anyone had heard me speak whilst I was wearing my sunglasses and thought I might be famous; I wasn’t even that I was having a particularly good hair day and assumed everyone had been gazing at me. It was the luggage people. The very, very large, pink, matching set of luggage. You don’t roll stuff like that around and not get noticed.
I finally reconciled the fact that if anyone did wonder at me riding the elevators up and down from the platform to the station a lot, I probably would never see them again or it would make for a delightfully quirky story for them to tell their significant other upon their return home. That girl with the pink bag as big as herself wearing new shoes she couldn’t walk in properly.
Back up in the station, I check that the platform was the right one and dove back into the elevator again to resume my vigil on the platform. No sooner had I exited the elevator a train arrived. It was 10 minutes early (unheard of in the UK and thus put me on edge) there was still no one around to ask which train it was and it was obvious that the ‘out of service’ carriage was going to come to a halt in front of me. Commuter jogging (affecting all the signs of running: breathing heavily, exaggerated leg and arm movements, looking flustered and desperate but not moving any faster) up to the lit carriages I accosted the first man I saw and demanded to know where he had come from. He scuttled away in alarm and I realised I should probably calm down and construct my sentences with less accusatory tone.
I asked next person to spill from the train if it continued to Boston, a guy wearing a Sox cap: “Sure, I think”. Hmmm this was not enough for me to risk jumping on board and heading to Washington but I also didn’t want to miss it and have to wait another hour for the next one. The best part of three hours early is too much even for me.
I wanted to ask someone else but Sox fan was loitering and as much as I didn’t trust his judgement I also did want to hurt his feelings by publically not trusting his judgement and asking someone else in front of him. The perpetual English dilemma of being too polite for our own good.
Sod it, it’s going to leave without me at this rate. So I did a further commuter dash to an open door and bustled onto the car, falling over a bit because I was in a rush. I made that ‘phew’ noise and an over exaggerated look of relief to a fellow passenger (it was not returned) and fell into a set in a jumble with my luggage.
The train then sat there for 10 minutes.
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