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The way to Wales
Alice Thomas Ellis
Iknow the way to Wales. I'm not sure that I could find my way to Leicester Square unless I took a taxi, but I know the way to Wales because we go there so often, and although it is Janet who does the driving I like to keep on the alert ever since the time she fell asleep round about Birm- ingham. I know two ways to Wales. I know the way through Towcester, where there is a most excellent chip shop and ten miles further on is a jolly good pub called the Narrow Boat where they sell real food as opposed to whatever it is they have on offer in the Little Chef, where even the salt seems tasteless. In the Narrow Boat they serve real steak-and-kidney pud. I hate kidneys but I approve of their presence in steak-and-kidney pud because of the Trades Descriptions Act. I fish them out and take them away for Cadders, who loves them. And I know the scenic route which passes through Chipping Norton.
My friend the psychiatrist drove us to Wales the other weekend. I said I knew two ways, and which would he prefer, but he was determined to find a way of his own. I kept bleating about the Vale of Evesham and Wyre Piddle and he told me to shut up and not be so silly. He scribbled a route on the map and gave it to his mother so she could navigate and we set off on a very circuitous journey. Every so often she would mildly suggest a small deviation from his chosen route, and this made him cross. At one point he removed a hand from the wheel and jabbed irri- tatedly at the map with his forefinger. 'It's that effing road,' he remarked. 'You daft old bat': a phrase which seems to me to be deficient in both filial respect and profes- sional polish, but then we're none of us perfect and, by dint of driving like the clappers, he got us to our destination before nightfall, despite an interesting circular tour of Ludlow.
Two of the boys have just set off, complete with rucksacks and ghetto- blaster, to travel by train and the weekly bus, and I wonder if they'll ever get there. In the old days before Dr Beeching mod- ernised the railways the train went straight to our village, and we have a pub called the Railway Inn which puzzles strangers very much since the nearest length of track is 30 miles away. I am also wondering what the weather is doing down there since they still have a few miles to walk from the bus stop to the house and are not wearing mackin- toshes. It is most certainly raining here. It was raining there over the weekend and I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't. It is maddening to trek hundreds of miles to the country merely to huddle indoors, which one can do more comfort- ably in London anyway.
We sat in the garden in the wind and the rain, and the psychiatrist cleaned his motor car and practised playing his violin while I read aloud from the Book of Judges, not because it was Sunday but because Judges 19 describes a journey even more hellish than the one we had just undergone. (It had been uncomfortable for me because I had insisted on bringing the plate rack and it stuck in the back of my neck the whole way.) The travellers in Judges 19 must most fervently have wished that they'd stayed at home. I won't relate here what happened to them, because it is actually too horrible. Suffice it to say that one poor girl ended up by being chopped into 12 pieces and posted off to all the coasts of Israel, and that wasn't the worst thing. What is particularly unnerving is that there is a strong hint that all the trouble only happened because the male traveller kept allowing himself to be seduced into having just one more for the road. The biblical for this is: 'I beseech thee to take a little meat; and strengthening thyself, till the day be further advanced, afterwards thou mayest depart' or 'Tarry with me today also and spend the day in mirth'. It is a perfectly awful warning of what can happen to the weak-willed and also a reminder that travel can be vastly overrated.
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