Five Bars
Today was one of the most momentous days of my life. I spent two hours on a train this morning, Philip Glass' Solo Piano on the iPod, watching England's rolling countryside being flung past my window and waiting for a phone call.
It was a call, I tried not to remind myself as the butterflies in my stomach beat and quivered, that had the power to transform the next three years of my life. And travelling to a conference where I was expected to tell the waiting audience that anything is possible, it felt strange that so much of my future was see-sawing on the crux of one person's yes or no.
As we passed power station, Halfords warehouse, drab goods wagon with a blaze of graffiti down its flank; as my hope ebbed and flowed with the flickering bars of the mobile signal, I thought about the conversation with my mother this morning, when I learnt that my grandmother, gravely ill, was on her deathbed. A grandmother that I never knew, and that I will probably never know. Another small part of me somewhere, another flickering signal.
When the call I was waiting for came, I felt oddly dispassionate. It was good news. Perhaps the best news I've ever been handed, but expeditions have taught me to face down fear, to see through emotion's flap and facade, to be objective not excitable. Nothing's ever as good, or as bad as it first seems, right?
From train to taxi to another hotel, another stage. People ask if I ever tire of telling the same story, but I think of bellringers: pulling the rope is always the same, but the beauty is in never knowing who might catch the echoes on the wind. Staring into the bright lights in front of five hundred today, I feel oddly detached. One step removed. Handshakes. A taxi. A seat cover with wooden beads. Local radio. The girl next to me on the station bench eats chips in gravy with a wooden fork. Her striped carrier bag blows open in the breeze; two cans of lager.
My grandmother died earlier today, so she won't hear the story you're reading now, that I typed with two thumbs on a phone, on the train back to London. I'll tell you the news as soon as it's official, but it involves a big company, a big sum of money and the biggest plans I've ever made. Finally, finally. Five bars.
(Branka Parliic plays Philip Glass' Mad Rush.)
— Filed under North Pole 2008, Rumination, SOUTH