Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Author:Bill Bryson
Language: es
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2010-06-28T03:00:00+00:00

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FIFTEEN

I WENT TO RETFORD. I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT. THROUGH MY MORNING ablutions, the gentle removal of the tissues from my swollen nostrils, through breakfast and checking out of the hotel and the long walk to the station, it was my solemn and dutiful intention to go to Norwich and thence to Lincoln. But for some reason, as soon as I entered the station and spied a British Rail map on the wall, I had a strange, sudden hankering to go somewhere entirely new, and Retford jumped out at me.

For the past seven years, I had passed through Retford every time I took a train between Leeds and London. It was one of the main stops on the east coast line, but I had never seen anyone get on or anyone get off there. On my British Rail route map, Retford was accorded capital letters, giving it equal typographical standing with Liverpool, Leicester, Nottingham, Glasgow and all the other substantial communities of Britain, and yet I knew nothing about it. In fact, I don’t believe I had even heard of it before I saw its lonely station for the first time from the train. More than that, I had never met anyone who had been there or knew anything about it. My AA Book of British Towns included lavish and kindly descriptions of every obscure community you could think to name—Kirriemuir, Knutsford, Prestonpans, Swadlincote, Bridge of Allan, Duns, Forfar, Wigtown—but of Retford it maintained a stern and mysterious silence. Clearly, it was time to check this place out.

So I caught a train to Peterborough and then another on the main line north. I hadn’t slept particularly well on account of an unsettling dream involving Cagney and Lacey and the discovery that I hadn’t filed a US tax return since 1975 (they threatened to turn me over to that guy who takes his shirt off in the opening credits, so you can imagine the state of my bedclothes when I awoke with a gasp about dawn), and I was looking forward to one of those quiet, soothing journeys of the kind that British Rail are always promising—the ones where your shoes turn into slippers and Leon Redbone sings you to sleep.

So it was with some dismay that I discovered that the seat behind me was occupied by Vodaphone Man. These people are getting to be a real nuisance, aren’t they? This one was particularly irritating because his voice was loud and self-satisfied and littered with moronspeak, and his calls were so clearly pointless:

‘Hello, Clive here. I’m on the 10.07 and should be at HQ by 1300 hours as expected. I’m going to need a rush debrief on the Pentland Squire scenario. What say? No, I’m out of the loop on Maris Pipers. Listen, can you think of any reason why anyone would employ a total anus like me? What’s that? Because I’m the sort of person who’s happy as a pig in shit just because he’s got a mobile phone? Hey, interesting concept.

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