Wishful thinking would...

...have me going back to uni all over again. In the UK this time.

What sparked this post? Well.

Read in The Age that the Fremantle train line will be closed.
Now, that’s sad. Remember I used to take that to the Showgrounds for my uni exams. Or was that the Epsom line? I remember very clearly visiting Fremantle when I was in Perth, so maybe this is a different line haha.

Hm.. it was fun to sit on the train gazing out the window confidently en route to the exams while everyone around me tried to do last minute cramming, and I just listened to my Discman while watching the world zoom by outside the window trains. One moment you’d see the sign for, say, Malvern, and the next, you’d be in a dark tunnel gazing at your own reflection, and then you’d see the sign for Croydon, then you’d see graffiti, then you’d be in a tunnel again.

And it was fun on the way back feeling confident while the people around me chatted and discussed what they answered wrongly, beat themselves up over wrong answers, or did over the top celebratory gestures (read-emphatic fist pumps). I always thought that was rather pointless as we can’t change anything anymore anyway so let’s just chill and enjoy life. Be cool. That was my motto. Even when wearing my beanie, blowing on my cold hands while fervently clutching my Discman. Be cool.

Anyway, as a kid, perhaps due to all those Enid Blyton books, my favourite country was England. It still is, due to Roald Dahl, and very significantly, my History lessons. I always thought I’d go there for my overseas education, but due to the economic setbacks of the late 90s, I ended up going to economically sensibler Australia.

Even now, I harbour the occasional fleeting thought of going there, and this is stirred up whenever I come across any reminders. I’ve never been, but I can already imagine it. I really envy those people who can say they’ve been there, and on weekends they’d take the train down to London, and then hearing them throw out names like Picadilly and Soho and the thousand other places you read or hear about, especially in Tony Parsons’ books. I wouldn’t talk about this anymore, but, really, that’s a big wish of mine. I want to visit the Tower of London, Big Ben, go to Salisbury Plain to see Stonehenge, go to Hampton Court, rent a car and drive from Scotland to the Lake District (Darren did it, so I can too), visit Bath, stand on the Cliffs of Dover, touch a part of Hadrian’s wall, visit Westminster Abbey (where Kings and Queens were crowned and buried), take the tube, explore the backstreets, go to Liverpool, go to Bristol where Joanne spent a year, want to see Stratford upon Avon, visit the Globe Theatre, stand on London Bridge, throw a pebble into the Thames, use the phone in one of those red phone booths, take pictures on top of a red double decker while the wind is blowing my hair back, touch an old fashioned postbox, walk on the streets when it snows and everyone is rushing to do their Christmas shopping, experience Christmas there, visit Townsend court, visit Sevenoaks, gaze upon a real castle or two and imagine this was medieval times, the Middle Ages, and a siege was taking place.

I want to live in the country for a few nights, take long walks, over hedges and stiles, see the farming fields and the knitted patterns on the fields, see Longhorn cows, visit Nottingham Forest, and be able to paste photos in my travel diary of me standing next to signs that read Brick Lane, Camden Town, Jermyn Street, Marylebone (that’s from Monopoly), Bonds Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street…such wonderful names, you definitely don’t see those in Melbourne. I want to see what is this Strand, Savile Row, Leicester Sq, Elgin Crescent…such names that evoke stirrings in your imagination. I want to go to Trafalgar Sq (though I hear Lord Nelson has been besieged by significantly fewer pigeons then in older times). I want to go to Hastings.

Whenever I hear about or read about university life there, my mind stirs up scenes conjured by the words from the books I have read. Is it the same as in Melbourne, with uni students standing on platforms, red cheeks puffed out, blowing and huffing on their gloved hands to keep themselves warm, stamping their feet, while waiting for the train to come in? Do they really have dinner together at those dinner halls, and call it something college? Ah…

I probably can’t finish it all in one holiday. I’d probably have to do the working holiday thing there, which Teong is hoping to do. I wish I had a career that was much more mobile than this. I guess those who have been there probably can tell me it is nothing like how I imagined, but I rather find out for myself.