PhilPaine.com

There’s a time in every jour­ney when things don’t go well. Usu­al­ly, some small event presages the com­ing trou­ble, as comets were said to fore­warn of the Black Death.

Not far from the spot where the Wilt­shire Wind undid my plans…the ancient arti­fi­cial mound known as Sil­bury Hill is in view.

In my case, the omen occurred back in Wilt­shire. I was afoot on the Marl­bor­ough Downs, trekking between Sil­bury Hill and a clus­ter of minor bur­ial mounds on a hill­top, well away from the road. I chanced upon a spring, and desir­ing some cof­fee to brace me in the cold wind, I made a tiny smudge fire (con­tained in my own steel pan, to pre­vent any scar­ring of the land). I boiled a small amount of water, and poured it through a piece of fil­ter paper that wrapped a lump of Ital­ian espres­so, as I had done many times before in the Cana­di­an bush. It’s a crude sys­tem, but it pro­vides an accept­able cup of cof­fee. When the process was fin­ished, I lift­ed up the sod­den fil­ter in one hand, and it was torn from my fin­gers by a sud­den gust of wind. The mess land­ed on my open note­book. About a dozen pages were soaked with hot water and cof­fee grounds. As I attempt­ed to remove them from the binder, yet anoth­er gust of wind tore the sog­gy sheets from the binder and scat­tered them. They were, I believed, only a few scrib­bled sketch­es, of lit­tle importance.

Days lat­er, back in Lon­don, I noticed that one of the miss­ing sheets was a print­out on which I had put all sorts of use­ful data: address­es, cell num­bers, access codes. Among them, the cell num­bers of Fil­ip Marek, in Prague, and of Isaac White, who would join me there to begin our hitch-hik­ing adven­ture in Tran­syl­va­nia. Not to wor­ry. I had antic­i­pat­ed this con­tin­gency, and e‑mailed all the data to myself, so that it could be accessed from any com­put­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I had fool­ish­ly sent them as an attach­ment. I attempt­ed to retrieve them at an inter­net café, but the brows­er would not open the attach­ment. No sweat. I was due to arrive in Prague that evening, and would be meet­ing both men. No need for the data.

I spent the ear­ly morn­ing explor­ing a lit­tle more of Lon­don, and writ­ing more blog. I left for Gatwick air­port with plen­ty of time. All was run­ning smoothly.

It’s in such cir­cum­stances that I have an unfor­tu­nate ten­den­cy to let my guard down. When trav­el­ing, any lit­tle error can lead to dis­as­ter. At the rail­way sta­tion, I pro­ceed­ed to the plat­form marked for the Gatwick train, which was due in a few min­utes. Those min­utes passed quick­ly. Too quick­ly, as it turned out. I stepped on the train. The echo­ing announce­ments were in a thick region­al Eng­lish accent that I had some dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing. But the train pro­ceed­ed through the famil­iar sta­tions toward Gatwick. I sat back, and slipped into a con­tem­pla­tive mode, antic­i­pat­ing with plea­sure my meet­ing with Fil­ip, whom I had not seen for five years.

You guessed it. I was not on the right train. After a few sta­tions iden­ti­cal to the Gatwick train’s, it veered off in anoth­er direc­tion entire­ly. Even­tu­al­ly, I noticed that some­thing was wrong when we passed a self-evi­dent­ly impos­si­ble sta­tion. It took some time before the train actu­al­ly stopped at a sta­tion, and I jumped off, mak­ing a bee-line for the tick­et office. It turned out that the only pos­si­ble way to get to Gatwick would be to change trains twice, and return to Lon­don, start­ing again from a dif­fer­ent Lon­don sta­tion. By the time I got to Gatwick, my flight had closed board­ing. The next flight was at noon the next day. Buy­ing it took anoth­er huge slice from my cash reserves. The rest of my trip will have to involve skimp­ing on a hero­ic scale. Fur­ther­more, I will be oblig­ed to spend the next sev­en­teen at Gatwick.

Now a new prob­lem pre­sent­ed itself. I had to warn Fil­ip and Isaac of my delay. Fil­ip would be soon on his way to the air­port to meet my flight. Both his cell num­ber and Isaacs were buried in an unopened attach­ment in my hot­mail account. There was inter­net access at Gatwick, of course, at the out­ra­geous price of one pound for five min­utes. But noth­ing could per­suade the browsers there to open the attach­ment. I could only send e‑mail mes­sages, hop­ing they would be read in time. It would be a five mile walk, with a heavy back­pack, into the town of Craw­ley, to find some oth­er com­put­er, with no cer­tain­ty that it would work any better

Time passed as I tried to solve this prob­lem in var­i­ous ways. Phon­ing home to Toron­to to have my broth­er open the account and tell me num­bers did­n’t work. It was an incon­ve­nient hour back home, and I could only reach an answer­ing machine.

Even­tu­al­ly, I noticed signs indi­cat­ing that there was a Hilton hotel attached to the air­port. It was reach­able by a long and con­vo­lut­ed march through wind­ing pas­sages, stairs, and tran­sect­ing a car-park. I have only rarely stayed in hotels, but I have some expe­ri­ence deal­ing with them in con­nec­tion with Sci­ence Fic­tion con­ven­tions. One thing I know is that a qual­i­ty hotel (on the lev­el of a Hilton) always has a very help­ful and knowl­edge­able staff — that’s what makes them qual­i­ty hotels, not mere­ly the fan­cy build­ings. They also have busi­ness centers.

I was proven right from the first moment. The Hilton’s concierge demon­strat­ed his spir­i­tu­al descent from the knights of old. Though I was clear­ly not a guest, nor like­ly to be, from my scruffy appear­ance and over­stuffed back­pack, he was extreme­ly help­ful, treat­ing me with warmth and con­cern. He attempt­ed to down­load my e‑mail attach­ment through his own com­put­er. When that did­n’t work, he made a phone call up to a pri­vate busi­ness lounge, nor­mal­ly reserved for pay­ing guests. The clerk there was informed of my plight. When I reached the lounge, she direct­ed me to a com­put­er. When it did not suc­ceed in open­ing the attach­ment, she insist­ed that I try anoth­er one that had a dif­fer­ent brows­er. Lo and behold, that did the trick. All the pre­vi­ous com­put­ers had used the wretched Explor­er brows­er, while this one used the supe­ri­or Fire­fox that I employed back home. It opened the files with­out hes­i­ta­tion. The clerk, an extreme­ly attrac­tive Japan­ese-Briton with a voice that would melt you with its charm, insist­ed that the doc­u­ments be print­ed off, at no cost. The entire ser­vice was pro­vid­ed as a cour­tesy to a stranger with an unfore­seen dilem­ma. If I ever get (cor­rec­tion, when I get) some rea­son­able amount of wealth, I will make it a point to patron­ize Hilton hotels at every opportunity.

There was anoth­er hitch to over­come. I had the num­bers, but the British pay phones could not seem to get me through to Prague. Every time I tried, the Lon­don oper­a­tor told me that they could not con­nect, and asked me to try again lat­er. Final­ly, when I did reach an Eng­lish-speak­ing Czech oper­a­tor, she informed me that a col­lect call could not be made to a cell­phone. I fed my last remain­ing pounds into the phone, hop­ing they would be enough to con­nect me to Fil­ip. For­tu­nate­ly, Fil­ip picked up on the first attempt. He was already at the air­port. When we were cut off, he called back, but the British sys­tem cut us off repeat­ed­ly, every few sec­onds, as we for­mu­lat­ed a strat­a­gem to pick up Isaac at the train sta­tion and myself at the air­port tomorrow.

It remained for me to spend the night and next morn­ing at Gatwick, with­out spend­ing any mon­ey. I could exchange some Euros, but it would cost me, and the sub­se­quent amount would be an excess of pounds that i can’t use in Europe. When a Star­bucks closed, it left emp­ty arm­chairs in the lob­by adja­cent to it. I pulled togeth­er two of them, face to face, with my back­pack hor­i­zon­tal between them. With the cush­ion of one arm chair placed on top of the pack, I had a makeshift bed. There were bright lights, and loud­speak­ers con­stant­ly threat­en­ing to explode unat­tend­ed lug­gage, and a tele­vi­sion not too far away that blared the most dread­ful pop music videos. Every now and then, police­men armed with Arnold Schwartze­neger-style weapons would check me out. But even a few hours of frag­men­tary sleep was bet­ter than none.

At last, I am leav­ing Eng­land. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing place, but it makes you hem­or­rhage mon­ey at a dead­ly rate. Lon­don is a labyrinth that only the dar­ing and thick-skinned should brave, and one mis­step can have dread­ful con­se­quences, but, like New York, it’s an expe­ri­ence worth having.