England's Green and Petite Land

Birmingham bound again, but the trains are on time this morning so there are fewer opportunities for the sorts of antics I previously displayed.  Also, my novel is finished, the submissions are in the mail and all that remains is to wait for the rejections to come flooding in, leaving me with nothing to do on this sunny spring morning except stare out the window at the passing scenery.

Gosh, it's pretty.

The sun is glinting off the Downs and the grass is so dewy and green it looks like sparkling emeralds.  The spring lambs are gamboling, as only lambs can do, the Rapeseed fields are in bloom (remind me to tell you a joke about that later), covering the distant hills in vivid yellow, and rabbits are out in abundance, grazing in the morning light like a scene from Watership Down (which, lest I rhapsodize even more deeply over this bucolic setting, is about rabbit warfare).

Today, I am enamored of public transportation.  Despite my oft-chronicled misadventures with the system, and the fact of it being the laughing-stock of the EU, I remain amazed at just how easily (in a relative sense) you can move around this country without the benefit of a car.

England, as I am fond of pointing out, is about the size of NY State, which gives them a distinct advantage in the Getting From One Place To The Other department. Even if you include Scotland (which is sort of like Canada is to the US--a deceptively large neighbor where most everyone lives close to the borders and where it's best not to poke around too much in the hinterlands lest you come across a clan dressed in animal skins subsisting on wild berries and the occasional, curious tourist) you're still talking about an area somewhat less than the size of Michigan.

From my home in the South, I can do a daily commute to Newcastle-upon-Tyne--which would be the geographic equivalent of leaving Miami after an early breakfast, spending the bulk of the day in NYC and being back home for a late dinner--or Weston-Super-Mare--which would be like popping over to Sacramento for a business meeting and returning to Albany in time to catch the last half of NCIS.

As it is, I'm now on my way to Birmingham, which...well, you get the idea, and I doubt Birmingham would be thrilled to be compared to Omaha, anyway (and vice-versa).

My wife and I mostly rely on public transportation when we go on holiday, I generally use public transportation when I travel for work and, the other night, after a rare office get-together, I took a bus home while those with cars had to arrange for taxis or leave their vehicles and return for them later.

I won't say I'm getting to the point where I prefer not having a car, because I crossed that threshold the minute I landed. Having a car is sort of like being married: you know you always have a ride but you spend a lot of your time keeping an eye on it and buying it things.  But getting home by public transport, that's like pulling after a good night out: you get what you wanted all along and you don't have to make a lifetime commitment.

This isn't to say I regard my wife as a burden, or that I'm comparing the charming young ladies with casual morals who hang around the High Street to busses, I'm just, well, sitting here on this pleasant morning, enjoying a train ride through fetching countryside and wondering how on earth I'm going to write my way out of this one.

Oh, look!  More bunnies.  And one of them has an Uzi.