So this is what it is going to be like! For 90 days or more! I’m sitting in a cheap pub, drinking a well-earned beer in the town of Oxted, having walked 20km today with full pack. There isn’t a muscle in my body that isn’t complaining. I booked into the B&B which I found not without a little difficulty, despite two electronic devices pointing the way, but my hostess has cunningly disguised her establishment so there are no identifying marks at all, a rather poor marketing strategy. Fortunately, I cut such a disreputable, not to say desperate, figure, staggering down the suburban road, that I excited the interest of an elderly lady who knows everything and kindly directed me to the exact address without my even asking her!
This is my first B&B for quite some time. I had all but forgotten, but I have a curious relationship with these places. I figured it out in the bath. The problem is one doesn’t know who is in charge. I’m the customer, so surely it is I? But then it is her house and all her stuff, so surely she is the boss? So either we both think we call the shots, in which case there is a clash, or we both defer to the other, in which case there is an endless circling and bowing with neither quite knowing the way out. I resolved therefore that the most appropriate solution will be for me to observe closely the behaviour of all future proprietors and then to assume the opposite role. This should result in endlessly harmonious relationships. I will report on the success of this strategy in due course!
I keep having to remember I am in Oxted, which is most unlikely to be typical of the places through which I will be travelling in the months ahead. It is an intensely suburban, dormitory sort of place just outside the M25, where the station is the most important building in town, because that is where everybody goes every morning before leaving for London. It is very ordered, very rich, slightly antiseptic and rather impersonal. I can’t imagine striking up a conversation with anyone in this pub. Everyone seems to have a Potteresque invisibility cloak draped around them, but in their case it also prevents them from seeing anything outside their circle….
Believe it or not, I have just noticed that the pub has a direct view onto the station! I’ve just seen the 19:20 to London stop at Platform 1 (of course!). Which reminds me! I did a little research earlier and I understand that more than 1 million people visit Box Hill every year. So, not the Kogelberg, then!! Anyway, as I walked along, I figured that this equated to roughly 3,000 people per day. But obviously, the distribution is not even. More people would go there of a weekend. And most people would prefer to go there on a sunny day, such as yesterday, and particularly on an early spring day after having been cooped up indoors through the winter. So I figure that between 5,000 and 10,000 people went to Box Hill yesterday, and not one of them stole my ear-phones! Just what are the chances that there isn’t even a casual thief amongst a group of 5,000 or more people? You will say I was just lucky, but I will argue that the odds are simply astonishing! It’s one of the reasons I like this place so much, even if one has to accept a little antiseptic!
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