Two Suitcases full of Kangaroos

By Fil Bufalo

Passport? Check!

Suitcases? Check!

Kangaroos? Check!

And we’re off! If you enjoy travel, having a laugh, are a keen conversationalist and even keener historian and lover of brilliant architecture, then these trips are for you!

Take care to cosy on down in your seat, and choose your fellow seat-mate discerningly because one foot on the buses and there’s no looking back.

Tempted? Then make haste to hobble, hurdle or haul yourself up the gleaming silver steps of these ‘Laugh a minute’ luxury coaches and await further hilarious instructions. Rest assured you will never be able to look a tour guide straight in the eye ever again without thinking of Aston, Gilda, Stan or Hugh (no, not puppies).

From the wilds of Cornwall to cosy little Irish pubs, from pirate coves to magnificent Gothic churches, and from the oceans to the mountains across the valleys and windswept moors – these two coach tours have it all. Not to mention the mystery of the tiny, furry kangaroos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398447172

Fil Bufalo

Fil Bufalo has been writing forever, but only recently taken up writing in a genre she is finding hard to resist. Humorous travel narrative writing. Fil is a proud Australian, and she loves nothing more than to travel overseas, distributing tokens of Australian memorabilia to people all over the world. Fil dabbles in art, mosaics, gardening, and poetry writing. She is an extrovert who loves to have a chat with anyone who cares to listen. Lastly, Fil loves children and the ocean. In that order.

Book preview

About the Author

Fil Bufalo is an engaging writer who loves travelling, reading, music and architecture. While everyone around her was taking Polaroid pictures or slides by the rolls full, Fil could be found writing or sketching in her journal as a means of recording life. Fil loves meeting new people and is prone to exaggerating when relating stories—just to add that little bit of spice! The bigger the audience, the better. Her only reservations are restrictions on the number of words permissible.

Dedication

Dedicated to any Aussie who loves England and Ireland as much as I do!

Copyright Information ©

Fil Bufalo 2023

The right of Fil Bufalo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398447165 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398447172 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thank you to Jennifer, Fergus, Chris and Aaron for the techno and research support.

Part 1

England

Chapter 1 A

Getting There!

Circadian rhythm was probably not a concept to which I had ever given much thought. But, as a natural phenomenon, affecting the thick and thin of us for the most part of our lives, it had to be a good thing to have around. When you stop to think about it, most of what happens in life is governed by one’s actions towards, and interactions with, the world. As long as everything ripples along in perfect synchronicity—night following day—then we are fine. No complaints. Nothing rocking the boat!

This morning, my circadian rhythm was up the creek. I was late with my shower, the travelling outfit I had selected to look ‘hip’ for the trip—jeans and a crisp white shirt, which would possibly need washing and ironing every evening if I was to maintain my cool image throughout the trip—the strap on my sandal had broken as I’d wrestled just that teeny bit too forcefully with it and my hair was in the throes of a ‘bad hair day’ tantrum. Things were not good.

I could get it together though.

I knew I could.

There was still time for me to make it to the pickup point at the Kensington Hilton in Central London from where the tour coach would be leaving—headed for a six-day dalliance in sunny Devon and Cornwall. It was the height of summer, and the landscape deep down in Devon would be overrun with wildflowers and wildcards, ripe for the picking! I’d had my reservations about travelling solo for six days with strangers, but it was something I needed to get out of my system. Living my life in the Southern extremities of Australia, dreaming of living in curvaceous Cornwall and loving the beautiful bottom of England from afar (a twenty-thousand-kilometre gap, to be truthful) was no longer feasible.

The ‘Cornwall on my mind’ perpetual state was not an affliction peculiar to Australians. (Come to think of it, Willie Nelson had spent quite a bit of time thinking about someone or something that had always been on his mind.) I’d met a whole bunch of English and Irish people on my travels in both countries who suffered the same fate. No answer or antidote had yet been put forward, except to suggest that the poor unfortunates (and there were millions of us out there) struck down night after night with ‘Yearning for Cornwall complaint’ face their afflictions head on.

I had ignored the niggling warning signs of a full-blown epiphany for years, opting instead to visit almost the entirety of England, Scotland and Wales, off-shore islands included—yet leaving an extensive tour of Devon and Cornwall until last—a delectable slice of pure vanilla-pod cheesecake saved on my plate for a rainy day. (I had been to both counties on a previous holiday with friends for four days, but that had really only nipped the tip of the iceberg in terms of what both Devon and Cornwall had to offer the voracious traveller.)

The rain check on Devon and Cornwall turned out to be today, because not that many days ago, I could bear the ache not a moment longer, and had jumped on the first plane of the day bound for England. (Since it was me, and not a travel agent who had made the flight arrangements, I had been unfortunately detained in Dubai for twenty-four hours, and that had set me back somewhat.) The authorities had urged me (twisted my arm behind my back in a cruel Nun/Brother manoeuvre) to put forward valid reasons for travelling alone at such short notice. (My booking date had been checked against my ticket.)

I did have valid reasons, and I did (finally) manage to persuade the interrogators that they were, indeed, legitimate reasons. My challenge was to convince the fierce interrogators that my longing for Cornwall needed to be treated as a kind of homesickness. Which, in a way, it was. It was just that my home was in Melbourne and not in Padstow.

Luckily, I’d held a trump card. I’d been able to look the meanest, ugliest fleecers on the entire planet, in their kohl-lined glassy eyes (men and women alike) and bravely declare that I shared a backyard (and a hills-hoist clothes-line) with Rick Stein—that famous chef from Cornwall—and that I was on my way to week-long cooking classes he was holding in his restaurant opposite Padstow’s trawler-filled harbour next week.

Impressive! Had been the enthusiastic response from all three fleecers. Do you run a cookery school of your own in Australia too? Do you know a Mr James Oliver?

I couldn’t keep up the pretence for too long, as all that action had been occurring at two in the morning, but I’d kamikazed in for the kill with my response to the Jamie Oliver question, hoping to knock the interrogation on the head for once and for all, and book myself into the airport hotel for some much-needed sleep.

Things always looked much better in the mornings.

Well, I don’t personally know James Oliver, but I have met him. I bought a fridge and a washing machine combination from a White Goods outlet that had Jamie Oliver as the face of their franchise. This gave me automatic entry into a competition, and I won a prize of three nights’ accommodation in a Five-star hotel, and the opportunity to learn how to cook from the master-tickets for two to Jamie’s cooking Demonstration Show.

What I had failed to pick up on was that it was close to the end of their shift at three am, and the passport scrutinisers had lost interest in my long-winded, probably entirely incomprehensible answer to the simple question and my (more than obvious) diversionary tactics. Although it was post-Ramadan by almost a month, I was possibly making them hungry with my ravings about food and cooking, and without warning, they just wanted to be rid of me.

Next!

I’d recognise that code word anywhere in the world. It meant I could go. I was free to move on and lose myself somewhere in the labyrinths of the world’s largest airport (with the capacity for over sixty million passengers) until it was time for my connecting flight to London Heathrow-still twelve hours away. I was not without choices. I may not have spent hours planning today’s trip to Cornwall, but I was pretty airport savvy, and semi-au fait with the prowling metropolis that was Dubai International. When I mentioned choices being available to me, I was talking about the choices within the actual airport as there was no way on this earth I would be whirling—dervishing myself out of the revolving doors into the hostile, misogynistic dead-of-night Dubai.

I would be staying right where I was. Safe and warm. (Too warm! Sweating if I were to be honest).

Suffice to say, dismissed and left to fend for myself, I made the snap decision to wander up to the Qantas lounge on the third floor of this very terminal—a place where I had spent many an interminable layover sojourn over my years of travelling to Europe.

If I stopped to think about it, I had begun my international travelling career quite late in the day. The only extended holiday-periods tossed my way had been the school holidays over Christmas—when London and Dublin froze over and wise tourists stayed home. I was also a nervous traveller, and although I’d been to Italy twice in my teenage years, I was not privy to that low, grey English horizon until I’d ticked off thirty-three years. I became an expert at concocting all the excuses under the sun as to the impracticality of traveling abroad around Christmas time, with the most plausible excuse being that the cities and surrounding country sides were not conducive to sightseeing—the longest day in terms of daylight was never going to be more than six hours.

By the time I was ready to begin my travelling career (courtesy of ‘Long Service Leave’), everyone else had seen everything there was to see. But I figured the attractions could not have changed that much, and what I didn’t know about a place could be rectified with a healthy slug of slide-show juice. I wondered just how many of those insufferable evenings I had sat through (slept through) before setting off with my swag for greener pastures. Thankfully, once I’d dipped my toes in international waters, I was able to beg off the slideshows, convincing my friends and family that I didn’t need to look at slides showcasing other people’s holidays when I could be hosting my own private parties.

My regular pattern for overseas holidays slipped into the monotony of every three years or so, but this time, I was unashamedly breaking the mould, and had decided, spur of the moment, to fly to England and tackle Devon and Cornwall head-on. The fires of curiosity, the insatiable thirst for the unknown, the itch that needed scratching-all valid reasons for me to have hurriedly packed my suitcase in Australia last Friday night, flown to England and slept off my jet lag in a comfy room at the Travelodge at Heathrow international.

As it was already six thirty am and the coach was expected at the London Hotel at eight am sharp, the best solution for me to make it, with time to spare, was turning out to be a taxi. I had no idea how much a taxi from Heathrow into the centre of London would set me back, but I was prepared to cough up, as I hadn’t planned the morning out well enough. I’d thought about my outfit, and my big suitcase hadn’t been touched since Australia, but I hadn’t thought much beyond that; I’d been sluggish and disinterested.

Last night, it had been a whole different story. By ten pm, I had checked all cases for the third time, adorned the plush pink velvet bedroom chair with clothes for the morning and for the duration of the night—the entire seven hours from eleven am until five—my ‘polished to within an inch of their life’ walking boots had taken up silent, sentry position either side of the door. The alarm had been set and curtains drawn. To ensure optimum nocturnal sleeping conditions, I had worn an eye-mask to bed and settled in to endure the night. Now, all of those careful machinations had gone kaput, and I was late as late could be. Deep breaths!

Down to the get-away taxis lined up outside the hotel (thank heavens I was still at the airport) and straight into the backseat, as was my solemn practice when it came to being alone in taxis with only the driver. Normally trusting of everyone, I had been fooled, duped and swindled by far too many a taxi driver to feel comfortable in the front seat, knowing the backseat was empty. I am aware that not all taxi drivers are bad, and the good ones tended to outrun the baddies two to one, but when I’m by myself, I live by a code. The code of ’Never, never, never venture anywhere by yourself at any time of the day or night, unless you are in possession of either capsicum spray or a bullet-proof vest. Or both!

It took me possibly ten minutes more to shuffle down in the lift as quietly as I could, and out into the thin grey morning airport light, but it was worth the effort, as not having called for the porter to carry my suitcases downstairs, meant that the boy had remained at his post by the entrance doors. No sooner had I emerged from the spacious lift (designed no doubt for airport-transit patrons) than he was by my side, relieving me of my appendages and repeating Good morning miss in a velvety singsong Welsh voice to rival a young Tom or Aled Jones.

What’s occurring fer you this fine morning, miss? If the undulating tone of his voice hadn’t already given him away as Welsh, his use of the phrase, What’s occurring now? was definitive Miss Marple proof of his roots. Confirmation came by way of his large-print nametag, ‘Brin’. He was cheeky and bright, and a surprise welcome to my first encounter with one of Queen Elizabeth’s loyal subjects. If I could manage to jump into one of the waiting taxis (assuming them to be lined up outside), and if I could arrive at the Kensington inner-London hotel in plenty of time in which to score a comfortable front-seat on the coach, then the rush to make it to England to undertake my tour of Devon and Cornwall would not have been in vain.

This Welshman with the voice two tones above my own (and I’m a singer) was the first person I was to meet in the chain of hospitality enthusiasts who would be overcompensating to ensure I had the time of my life in the surf and the sun. Even as I thought about the sun, it felt strange to be juxtaposing England and sunshine in the same sentence. I was going out on a limb here, hoping England to shed her uptight, gloomy, raincoated persona and emerge as a chilled, yet temperate climate landscape. From what I’d read about Devon and Cornwall, it wasn’t entirely implausible, but it would take some good luck and a huge seasonal advantage to pull it off.

As luck would have it, my epiphany urging me to visit Cornwall had erupted unexpectedly in June, and although my seat on the plane had been towards the tail, in the thick of crying-Babyville, it had been perfectly adequate. However, it turned out to be entirely true that beggars cannot be choosers when no notice is given. Added to the run of good luck with the plane, I’d managed to score the last seat on the only coach which hadn’t been fully booked for the last remaining Devon and Cornwall trip this year. To me that had meant only one thing! The Universe intended me to go.

For some reason, presumably to be revealed with fanfare, pomp and ceremony at some stage of the trip, or maybe to meet a brooding Poldark lookalike widower on the windswept Cornish cliffs, I was destined to be on that coach and destined to walk the rolling Devon hills and wade the turquoise whirling Cornish waters. (If I did meet a handsome stranger, I’d need to make sure he closely resembled Captain Ross Poldark (Irish actor Aidan Turner) not to be confused with a Polish-Nigerian.)

The taxi was a surprise bonus. A gleaming black cab complete with driver sat up in chauffeur gear, complete with a driver’s cap and dark sunnies, even though this ‘morning of low horizon’ was predictably grey and gloomy.

I was thrilled to see the cab, iconic England, at my doorstep. The last time I had been in a black cab was when my good friend Finley of the Archway North London had driven me around the burbs on a private Celebrity tour, taking in the ostentatious front gardens and external proportions of the homes of globally famous stars of the stage, screen and literary world, living and breathing in North London. (Actually one, sadly no longer breathing, the inimitable George Michael, whose four-storey home was only three streets away from Finley’s own home.) This cab in front of me could well have been Finley’s, but then so could any of the twenty or so other cabs lined up behind him. They were peas in a pod—polished to within an inch of their lives as had been the boots I was now wearing, which had stood guard by my bedroom door throughout the night and were now in for an unexpected surprise treat when they’d be climbing the steep hills of Bath later today.

The porter was loading my suitcases into the main section of the cab, and in addition to handing him a tip (loose change I’d had the foresight to have ready in my change-purse), I rummaged around blindly in my backpack and managed to lay my hands on one of the tiny souvenir kangaroos I had brought with me from Australia to hand out to deserving recipients in Devon and Cornwall and further offshore if I were to turn out to be a wise distributor. The boy was Welsh, and I was aware I was not yet in either desired county. Still, I had to start somewhere, and he was at least awake at this ungodly hour of the morning.

There was precious little time for explanation, as it was, by now, nearing seven o’clock, so I thrust the fistful of coins and one tiny kangaroo into his chest with a beaming smile and a monosyllabic explanation—enjoy! I wasn’t even sure if the boy had realised that I was Australian, or if he’d even heard of a kangaroo, let alone why I was parting with one. I supposed he might have thought I was North American or even South African, as it would have been difficult to have gleaned my accent from one solitary five-letter word.

Brin was a gracious Welshman, because he grasped the kangaroo and shrapnel with his free hand, nodded his thanks and without a word raced back up the stone steps of the Hotel to the next contingent of people who had made a sudden appearance, also in a hurry for a taxi or black cab by the looks of things, and possibly late for a World Cruise, judging by the amount of luggage they were coveting between the four of them. Had time been on my side, I might have shared the black cab with them and we might have discovered that they were also about to embark on a trip around England in a coach, beginning in London.

But as I was already halfway inside the cab, and my luggage had already taken up half of the floor space, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to have suggested sharing. Been there, done that too many times! I would just have to cut back on souvenirs from the cities and little villages of Devon and Cornwall until I had recouped the sixty or so pounds it was going to cost me to be deposited on the front steps of the Hotel in Kensington.

The driver was your typical middle-aged, ‘been driving for a lifetime’ and blitzed the ‘Knowledge’ three times, rhyming slang cockney affair in a cap. The first thing he asked me, when I was finally able to lean back and catch my breath, was whether or not I had ever been to East London (where he had been born and bred) and if I was partial to the ‘baked-bean’. Early morning quizzes were never my favourite pastime, especially ones with no apparent clue in the question. I racked my brain to think of a word that rhymed with ‘bean’, as although nowhere near fluent in the dialect, I had a smattering of rhyming slang under my belt, courtesy of a twenty-year obsession with EastEnders. I just hadn’t heard ‘baked beans’ in any conversations on the set. Might it have had something to do with breakfast? To stall for time, I mutely handed the overeager quizmaster a folded piece of paper with the address of the hotel in Kensington I needed, and emphasised to him that I wanted to be there by eight (am not pm) if possible, as the coach would not wait beyond eight-thirty. After that, any passengers who had failed to board would—unfortunately for them—forfeit the trip. That wouldn’t, couldn’t, be me!

The driver’s response to my request was in his actions as he floored the cab and sent me flying onto my suitcases. (I hadn’t yet fastened my seatbelt.) A blessing in disguise really, granting me another couple of minutes in which to continue racking my brain, trying to work out words to rhyme with bean. It had to be someone or something, the clue being the way in which the question had been phrased. Starting at the top, I methodically worked my way down the alphabet. (This was taking my mind off being late, and for that I was grateful.) Partial to the…screen, canteen, to Maureen, or maybe the gleaming windscreen? I tried all four words but didn’t get a bite from the driver. Then I tried the colour green and all the numbers with teen in them, but again, no joy.

Finally, I leant back in my seat and tried again to remember if I’d ever heard the humble baked bean being referred to in the countless episodes of EastEnders I had watched—and bang, it came to me with a jolt! Queen! The word Queen rhymed with ‘baked bean’. Sitting back smugly in the cab, watching the world go by, I waited until the driver had stopped at the next set of traffic lights, and then lent forwards and tapped on the glass partition.

Yes. I am quite partial to the Queen. Do you think we will see her somewhere in Kensington out for an early morning stroll with the corgis? The driver started chuckling and then whistling, ‘Rule Britannia’, and I knew I was off the hook with having to keep up the conversation in rhyming slang—or in any other old English code.

When I had been at university, studying English literature, I hadn’t bargained on there being two entirely different streams—Modern and Ancient English—or that I would be required to translate nearly all of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales from Middle to Modern English. The book had contained over seventeen thousand lines, couched within five hundred and twenty-eight pages contained in twenty-four separate stories! (I knew the facts and figures—having spent the best part of a year studying the Tales.)

I was shuddering in the back of the cab with my memories of those gruesome days.

On the bright side of life in London, the rest of the trip whizzed by. The driver was concentrating hard on the traffic which had begun to build up, as well as notching up his daily fix of ‘beat the red lights’ quite early in the day. I didn’t mind. I was resolved to my fate and had put myself entirely in his hands when I’d requested a speedy trip. I closed my eyes and prayed for the familiar oak trees of the wide roads of Kensington, London.

Chapter 1 B

Introductions

The hotel was bustling when we pulled up. Ideally, I would have preferred a drawbridge straight from the black cab onto the sparkling, freshly washed pink, blue and yellow coach which had assumed pride of place in the circular, flower-barrelled driveway, awaiting an onslaught of loud, overexcited guests. Every time I see a huge truck, train or coach still steaming from a hot, soapy scrub and hose-down, I imagine the driver (or the person responsible for the washing) to have been an elephant groomer in a former life, and to have gained his or her experience for the washing of planes, trains or coaches, with elephants in a fairly large Circus. Mr Galliano’s Circus from the Enid Blyton stories of my childhood came foremost to mind, but there were others still keeping Signor Galliano company, despite stiff competition from Stan and Netflix. The ‘Moscow Circus’ and the ‘Great Barnum Circus’ for starters.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of standing alongside elephants being washed down, the comparison will be obvious. Same process—elephants and coaches. The only real difference being the pungent smells (from the elephant, not the coach—unless it was a team of footballers) and the fact that there was ‘no standing too close to an elephant being washed down’. (Don’t even take a chance with a teeny little baby elephant unless you are prepared to change your outfit. Twice!)

This morning the washing had already been completed, but there had been many a time I had witnessed coaches being lovingly exfoliated by drivers (assisted sometimes by their side-kick guides) in the early morning or late evening until their exterior gleamed and glistened in the early-morning or moonlight. (More often than not, I’d been out walking near the hotel.) The dead giveaway would be the motley crew of buckets, extension-mops and brooms lined up outside the coach doors. And the flooded pavements.

After the driver and the doorman at the Kensington hotel had finished wrestling over whose obligation it was to carry my suitcases over the threshold into the hotel foyer, the driver turned expectantly to me for his fare and I graciously handed over four, crisp, twenty-pound notes, with a smile on my face. He would never know how much it pained me to part with four of my five twenty-pound English notes I had been saving for souvenirs. The notes were precious to me but could always be replaced. Credit where credit was due, the cab driver had done a sterling job of getting me to the coach on time.

He seemed pleased with his booty and sashayed back to his mobile man-cave, probably about to head straight for the nearest pub for a pint. I wouldn’t have blamed him. Chances were, he had been driving all night, and this was his last fare for the last shift of the morning. (There were special rules for night workers who were able to gain early admittance into some English pubs.) Although the quintessential English pub would probably emerge triumphant, he could have flown to Portugal and back for a min-break with the eighty quid I’d just thrust at him. (I prefer using the term ‘quid’ when in England. It makes me feel like I’m fitting in with the natives.)

Too late, I realised I had forgotten to include a tip. It wasn’t like me to forget, but it was too late for a recall. I’d just have to assume that eighty pounds included the tip. It was a veritable fortune for a cab ride. Petrol could not have been that expensive in London.

Not wanting to lose sight of my luggage, I remained in the foyer, coveting a seat a little way back from all the action of the morning. To my creative mind’s-eye, the foyer resembled the set for a musical, with actors pushing suitcase up and down and around and calling out to each other as they belted out the lyrics to ‘London the Musical’. Most of the crowd down here at this early hour had the look of fellow trippers, but it was difficult to make a definitive call. No one was really standing still long enough for me to introduce myself or to enquire as to whether they were up so early awaiting a coach tour, my coach tour—‘The best of Devon and Cornwall’.

One thing I would have killed for was a cup of strong black coffee to get me fired up for the day ahead. There was a ritzy Breakfast Room to the side of the foyer, and I could also see a coffee-bar up a few paisley-carpeted steps. It appeared to be open. From experience, I would hazard a guess that the food would be minimalist, but as I’d already eaten breakfast, food was not a priority, whereas coffee would be a more than welcome tonic.

An older woman was built-in behind the bar, mixing concoctions with such earnestness and concentration one would think she’d been ordered to supply takeaways for the Royal Family in residence a few blocks up the road. But it turned out to be a narcissistic ritual, as once the woman had seen me approaching, she had turned her back and noisily swallowed the concoction in one gulp. She’d then turned to me with a dazzling (false?) smile and apologised for having turned her back.

I was unfazed with the woman, her untruths or her actions. All I wanted was to down a black coffee and make my way outside to the coach. If time permitted, I might make a slight detour to the bathrooms, as I was always keen to judge the quality of a hotel by the state of the restrooms, and the visit would put me in a comfortable position until the first stop of the morning. My trip had been booked in such a hurry that I hadn’t even bothered to familiarise myself with which village, town or city was to be our first stop of the morning. That would all remain a breathy, unexpected surprise, and I relished the idea of being blindfolded and transported to a mystery location.

The woman was still waiting for me to order, and two more people had come up behind, one of them standing a little too close for comfort. They were discussing breakfast options, and I suspected they couldn’t have read the large black and white menu displayed near the bar, or they would have known the coffee shop was just that—a coffee shop which sold coffee and little else. They were speaking English, so it wasn’t a language barrier preventing them from understanding they would not be ordering any food. It was best not to get involved, but to put my best foot forward and wait patiently. Finally, the woman looked up.

Now, who was next then?

I would have thought that was more than obvious, since she had seen me approaching and knew darn well I had been there first. I mentally added short-sightedness to the list of shortcomings I was notching up against her, ordered my black coffee and a plain croissant and moved to the side of the counter. The woman began mixing and stirring again, frothing up the coffee machine and tapping away on the counter in heightened, almost frenzied percussion. (Not bad actually.) She was in a world of her own, happy with her job and life and keen to demonstrate her proficiency behind the bar. She suddenly stopped frothing and turned to me with the random statement, I am not the barista you might imagine me to be.

I hadn’t imagined the woman in any way, shape or form, other than to fleetingly question whether she might be filling in for a genuine barista on a break. She may have been his or her mother, grandmother or aunt, but one thing was for certain—the woman was no way a barista. How taxing could it be to pull a lever, push a few pulsating red and green buttons and wait for the coffee to drizzle out? I felt like hurdling the bar and going dutch with her—it was taking so long. At this rate, the coach would be at the first overnight stop, and I would have pitched my tent where I stood, still waiting to be handed steaming, frothy coffee. The couple behind me had already given up and left. They were no fools, and there would be other places serving breakfast with real baristas.

Time for the restrooms! The coffee had been so bitter I’d taken one gulp and thrown the rest into the nearest pot plant as one would discard dregs from a teapot (only in my case it was coffee), making sure no one was observing my behaviour. If anyone had noticed and had questioned my motives, I would have replied I was watering the plants with a thick liquid coffee fertiliser. It probably wouldn’t have been wise to have added that ‘coffee dregs’ was all the go in Australia. (Which wasn’t all that far from the truth, as back home, we recycled both the coffee-bean dregs and the disposable cups which we use to grow seedlings and vegetables.)

Most people were so busy wheeling or carrying suitcases towards the entrance doors that they didn’t seem to be noticing me—the green-fingered Aussie tourist with the big black suitcase, smaller blue case and assorted carry-on cases. I looked like a travelling saleswoman selling luggage. It occurred to me that if I were to set up a pop-up stall in the middle of the foyer and hand out the other sixty or so tiny kangaroos I had stowed in my backpack, then the load on my back would be considerably lighter. But that would be defeating the purpose of having brought them. The whole reason for having the furry little plush-creatures in my possession was to hand them out whilst travelling around Europe for the next two months. Blowing it all now, in one ‘foul’ swoop, would be akin to blowing all one’s pay on payday and living like a pauper for the next fortnight or month.

I was grateful for the ground floor plan of this Kensington hotel. Possibly because it was the starting point for so many coach tours, the foyer floor-space quadrupled the size of any normal hotel foyer. In addition to the breakfast room and the coffee shop from which I had just emerged, there was a huge, semi-circular reception desk, a substantial cloakroom and a souvenir shop with tiny little box display windows housing delicate, intricately tessellated china and porcelain knick-knacks, mini-books, paintings, scarves, coloured stones and jewellery. I had passed the souvenir shop earlier when I had been looking for the coffee shop and wished I’d had more time to go in for a squiz. At that stage, coffee had been a priority. Now it was the restrooms.

Putting two and two together, I figured the restrooms to have been in close proximity to the breakfast room, unless, of course, there were more inside the huge room. I was right. To the side of the breakfast room was a little corridor with tiny icons affixed to the doors. Female, Male and Disabled. Tempting as it was to slip behind the Disabled door, I dragged myself and my luggage further down the corridor to the other two restrooms. No doubt in twenty years’ time, I would not be so spoilt for choice!

Inside the female restrooms, it was all pinks and purples, with tiny, bevelled glass vases of wildflowers dotted along the white and pink speckled Laminex bench. Sparkling clean, super-neat with freshly placed wild-flower embroidered handtowels and tiny bars of soap with even tinier wildflowers etched into the bars. I was sensing a theme here and would love to have been introduced to the nature-loving window-dresser responsible for inner-sanctum decor. Gentle classical music (Brahms?) was filtering my subconscious, as was the dense olfactory challenge of perfumed air. Frangipani? Lavender? Sandalwood?

I was standing there sniffing when one of the cubicles was flung open and a short, frizzy haired woman in a sensible brown mohair coat made a dramatic centre-stage entrance, taking up her position at the washbasin closest to me. No luggage had been hidden anywhere in the room, which allowed me to conclude that, unlike me, she was travelling with one or more fellow travellers who were out there somewhere in the foyer guarding her luggage. The woman was humming to herself as she washed her hands, and she seemed very excited about something.

How are you now, my dear, and where might you be off to with all that luggage?

No one seemed to be noticing me anymore. It was all about my luggage. Since leaving Australia, I must have answered at least twenty luggage-related questions. Did you pack your own bags?

Why do you have two cases when you’re travelling alone? You are alone, aren’t you?

Where did you store your luggage at the airport?

Etc., etc…

I couldn’t do it anymore. But looking at the kind, expectant face of this diminutive woman in the fragrant restrooms, now would not be the best time to begin my boycott on luggage questions.

"I intend to substitute and interchange my suitcases while I’m travelling for two months. I won’t always have as many suitcases. It’s just that this is the beginning of my trip. I’ve only just arrived from Australia and I’ll have to keep all the cases with me until I can leave them at a friend’s place.

Where does your friend live? Somewhere nice?

She lived in London, and in my book, London would always be a nice place to call home.

Yes. London.

Oh. We’re from Northern New South Wales, and we’re Australians, dear, just like you. Are you also on the Devon and Cornwall trip?

The woman was thrilled when I stuck a blow for the affirmative. We ended up chatting for a bit, and she waited with my luggage until I was ready to re-enter the foyer. She was Patsy. Her husband was Stewart and I introduced myself as Fil. Nothing like restrooms for discovering fellow Australians and cementing friendships. Back in the foyer, it was all systems go! People were no longer milling around the armchairs in the foyer or gazing into the tiny window-boxes of the souvenir shop. They were up and about, and on the move big time. I stuck by the pair of them, which was a good move, because Stew had the raucous voice of a sweaty shearer needing to be heard over the din of the shearing shed.

Make way. Make way, everyone. Gentleman with two wives on the move! People were looking at him dubiously, unsure of whether or not he was proclaiming the truth. As they stood there rooted in awed silence that someone would be brave enough to announce such an audacious statement to the world, he grabbed Patsy with one hand and me with the other and propelled us to the front of the line. He himself stayed with all the luggage. I was glad I had overstayed my welcome in the restrooms loading myself up with the cabin luggage and spare clothing, as this meant I only had my two suitcases with which to contend.

Patsy seemed proud of her husband. You know, Fil, he really is sweet. And so religious. He was a priest for twenty years before he met me, and I was a Catholic nun. Now no one believes us when we tell them about our former lives. Do you believe me, Fil? Jesus is close to your heart. I can tell.

Patsy was right—Jesus was close to my heart and having been brought up in a strict Irish/Italian Catholic household, I loved God, carried a scapula (solely for my mother) and adored the music of Hillsong. But a devout Catholic, in agreement with all that went on in the name of Catholicism? Debatable! My biggest secret of the trip was that I would be exempt from having to find Catholic churches wherever we went to have been able to have attended a weekend mass. I had promised myself that I would make up the masses when I returned home in two months’ time, but that was highly unlikely. I would hop back on the bandwagon when I was ready to do so, and not before!

The seat Patsy found us was about halfway along the aisle and adjacent to the restrooms. It seemed Patsy and I were bonded by ablution blocks. I took the seat looking directly over the stairs to the restrooms and Patsy plonked herself in the seat behind, prepared to wait until everyone was settled on the coach. As Stew had five cases with which to wrestle, that might have been a long time coming. As it turned out, he didn’t end up taking all that long and was certainly not the last to board the coach. The last person to literally bounce up the stairs, and spring into the aisle with a practised ‘star jump’, was the tour guide—an extremely dapper-looking ginger-haired young man, well-groomed and dressed to impress for the first morning of the tour in a pale blue suit, white shirt and bowtie. He had a brown satchel attached to his shoulder and carried a ‘clipboard-comforter’, which he kept clasped to his chest whilst he made his introduction.

His name?

Aston.

Maybe nudging a quarter of a century, and very, very happy. Good morning everyone. (Hands clapping and jumping from leg to leg.) Wakey-wakey! We’re off to Devon and Cornwall. Make sure you’re all on the right coach now. Turn to your partner, or the person behind you, and let them know where you think you are going and what you hope to get out of the trip. Two minutes buzzing now, while Stan starts up the coach for us. There was an instant buzzing in the ranks, a droning hum akin to a swarm of bees out on a summer’s picnic.

Patsy and Stew completely ignored Aston’s instructions, tapped me on the shoulder and chorused out, Devon and Cornwall. We’re off to the wilds of Devon and Cornwall, and we can’t wait. I stared at them and quickly mimicked with the same inflection in my voice that we were ‘off to Devon and Cornwall’. This opportunity to verbalise one’s hopes and dreams for an intended destination must have been relatively new protocol. I’d noticed it cropping up more and more, to the point that even the airlines were at it.

Last month I had been asked on three separate occasions to account for my destination whilst flying from Melbourne to Canberra. It had been unmistakeably printed on my ticket, an announcement had been made three times over the intercom urging passengers to board for Canberra and the flight attendant at the boarding gate had electronically validated my ticket. Yet I was still asked to account for my destination as I left the aerobridge attempting to board the plane.

Obviously, the group was excited and anxious to do the right thing as they were all happily complying. Aston was doing a commendable job of roaming up and down the aisle with his microphone, welcoming and letting us know that all passengers on his list had been accounted for, that all luggage had been loaded, and that our heroic driver for our week-long vacation was Stan, who was ready to make tracks. He then stood, microphone in hand, at the front of the coach and invested the next ten or so minutes with an outline of coach rules and etiquette and plans for the day, confidently answering any questions that may have been burning away in people’s minds.

Most of the time, when a question had been asked, he left the front of the coach and he bent down next to the person or couple asking the question, and although this was probably a good way for Aston to get to know his passengers, it didn’t really help the rest of us glean information about each other. I would have preferred the system which had been employed on my last coach adventure—a tour of the Northern Italian lakes and Cinque Terra. Every morning of the ten-day tour, three or four people were selected to share something about themselves and their country. It had been a trifle daunting, but as we’d all expected to have a turn, it was just something one knew would happen at some stage of the trip. It may have been the brevity of this Devon and Cornwall trip which had let us all off the hook, or the fact that there were possibly more passengers on the coach today than had been on the Northern Italy trip. Even if three people a day spoke out, we could never have been able to get through everyone in six days.

Aston was having a breather. Leaving the parks and green spaces of London behind, we were now purring down the motorway. People were taking their time to settle in and surreptitiously size each other up without looking too obvious about it. I was still the sole occupant of the seat I’d found in front of Stew and Patsy. There were two women to the left of me, and I’d heard a mini-male choir booming from the seats behind when Aston had encouraged buzz-conversation.

Now, it was as quiet as a chapel just before dawn. The only real disturbance to the purring of the coach was the white noise from the motorway as we made our merry way out of smoggy London. Horns honking, the whooshing of gigantic food trucks passing us, tyres screeching and then the heavy rain on the roof. It always seemed to be raining in England. The sudden deluge had Aston again reaching for the microphone, assuring us it was just a summer shower, a slight passing distraction. He was also quick to point out that our driver, Stan, came with a wealth of experience, having finished cutting teeth in the coach driving business more than fifty years ago.

At a pinch, he might have been Aston’s grandfather. Stan’s experiences had been mainly restricted to the hills and dales of Southern England, and according to Aston, he knew the roads like the back of his hand, which was a comforting thought, as I’d been to both Devon and Cornwall before and had experienced the tiny windy, often unmade, roads first-hand. I hoped Stan also knew the roads like the ‘back of his feet’. Peering out the gleaming (freshly washed but now drizzle-streaked) window from my position behind the Australian couple, I realised it hadn’t taken all that long for the parks and green spaces to have been replaced by the motorway.

The six-lane concrete slab was thick with weekend traffic—including other coaches, probably also Devon and Cornwall bound. We were heading West, not North. I had been extremely fortunate to have secured a last-minute place on this coach. Somewhere in the recesses of mind was the notion that I would like to go back to Southern Ireland after this England trip, but I hadn’t yet booked a tour and didn’t fancy my chances of securing a seat on a coach in Ireland at this late stage, given it was the height of summer.

Aston had painstakingly explained to those new to the coach way of life that the historic Market town of Windsor (which was first up) would be a scheduled two-hour stop, during which time we were free to either explore the town on our own or stick with the group and tour the Castle. The only snag would be to secure tickets for the Castle tour, as there was no way of knowing, before we arrived, just how long the line-up at the castle entrance might be, on any given day.

I wasn’t all that with Castle-trekking today.

For two reasons.

The first being that I had spent almost a day inside the Castle last year after my big trip to Ireland with two of my sisters, and secondly, I desperately wanted to wander across the bridge into Windsor’s twin town, Eton, to see the world-renowned Boys’ School for myself. I decided on a feasible compromise. It might have looked better to have stuck with the group when we first left the coach, following Aston and the rest of the pack up the hill to the Castle, and then reassessing, once we’d seen whether or not the rain had kept the crowds away. (I knew it would be all uphill in the rain, because last year, when I’d arrived in Windsor by train from London, I’d seen all the buses and coaches lined up in the muddy parking area behind the train station, and naturally, it had been a day of rain and more rain.)

Remembering back to that trip, I’d had my heart set on travelling by the ‘Windsor Pullman express train’ of soaking up the view of the lush, green surrounding countryside from the comfort of the lavish, leather first-class armchair-styled seats and of indulging in a sumptuous brunch in the opulent dining carriage, complete with wood-panelling, vintage light fittings and delicate lace curtains. Instead, I’d had to make do with the regular, rattling, wet-floored Waterloo to Windsor service, and even though I had paid good money for a first-class ticket, there had been no first-class carriage forthcoming.

Our coach today was a step upmarket from the country-rattler train of last year, but it was nevertheless not without shortcomings. No flute of Veuve Clique champagne had been handed to either of us when we’d boarded, there’d been no personal wait-staff ready to attend to our every need and no opening of windows as incentive to breathe in bucket loads full of fresh country air. On the upside, we were dry and well-cared for by Aston and Stan. The fresh air was provided by the state-of-the-art coach air conditioning which, even at this early hour, was already putting in overtime, and although no champagne had been on the horizon, we had enjoyed sipping from our designer water bottles and sucking English boiled lollies.

I smiled to myself every time I thought about buying or eating boiled lollies. It was so English! Like boiled eggs for breakfast, fruit cake for afternoon tea and gin for that not to be missed nightcap in the drawing-room. I stretched out in my seat like a cat on a hot tin roof and waited for the coach to come to a complete stop. It hit me that I was really looking forward to this trip. Our first stop, Windsor, would, I was certain, set a cracking precedent for the days to come. I hadn’t felt such anticipation and excitement for a long time.

Chapter 1 C

Whimsical Windsor

As we made our way into the centre of Windsor, reputably the richest settlement in England, I marvelled at the way everything about the place was so old.

Bone-old!

Even the air had that tinge of old armour to it. Had we been blindfolded and led off the coach unaware of our surrounds, it would not have been too difficult to have surmised there to have been a castle of some incredible vintage within close proximity. I recalled the solid moat streets surrounding the Castle as having been quite narrow, and even if coaches had been permitted to park so close to the Castle, it would have been difficult for Stan to have edged the enormous pink and yellow stripped buzzard into the narrow spaces reserved for official vehicles. There would still have been heritage stables and coach-parking at the back of the Castle, but that would have been for parking completely different styles of coaches.

A more reasonable guess would be that we’d find ourselves in the bus, tractor and coach carpark I had seen from the train last year. I was certain it was going to be a matter of trudging up the hill, clogged with antique, souvenir and ice cream shops, towards the Castle. Once we’d ended up in the grounds, I’d be able to slip away down the hill, past the markets of memorabilia and head for Eton.

It was still early, only about nine-thirty, when we arrived in Windsor. The rain had subsided and the only evidence to the fact that it had, without a doubt, rained all night and possibly all decade in this particular neck of the woods, was the over-abundance of large muddy puddles punctuating the ground of the huge paddock-cum-coach-park. Stan had tried his laudable best to avoid pulling up in the thick of the pools and puddles, but even at this early hour, the field was already a huge muddy wading-pool. By the looks of things, Stan had been forced to settle for what he could get—a prime soggy position towards the end of the field near the ablution block. (Which could have been fortuitous as we’d be needing that detour after Windsor.)

I was right. We were in for a long walk! Not the actual iconic ‘Long walk’ itself, which would have taken us nearly the entirety of our two hours in Windsor to have walked the two and a half mile, dead-straight tree-lined path, leading from Windsor Castle to a vast park of some five thousand acres. Aston must have hailed from farm stock, as he was quite at home in the muddy field. (He was also Australian, so perhaps he had grown up on one of the many cattle stations dotted thousands of miles apart in outback Australia.)

It was still spitting slightly, but our fearless leader appeared undeterred by the water coursing down his face (drizzle or nervous sweat?) Umbrella hoisted high in the air, he set a cracking advancing pace. I didn’t really mind the walk, as it gave me a chance to appraise the other passengers who were to be my travelling companions for the next week. The ball was really in my court, as to whether I chose to team up with anyone, or tee out on a trajectory and spend the trip in secluded isolation, trailing, ignoring and not engaging in conversations.

It took me roughly thirty seconds to realise that even if I’d wanted to, I could not have remained a recluse. People had already begun chatting to me—commenting on the rain, and the mud and the ancient facades of the buildings abutting the parking field, the cobbled pathways and the general air of being in a small English town. Which really was Windsor at heart—if one ignored the fact that some helpful citizen had come along and plonked an enormous castle at the top of the hill. It wasn’t as if it was some measly, temporary sandcastle—more like the complete opposite.

A huge, sprawling, coming up for a thousand-year-old stone construction which many a king and queen (all thirty-nine of them starting with a Henry) over the last ten centuries would have been glad to have called home. In the last half hour of resting, I’d been reading up on that dot they called Windsor castle—crouched high above the Thames and buffered by the slow passing of time. This indulgent measure had been entirely precautionary, had I decided not to indulge in a second round of castellation.

In the midst of my cramming, I’d over-learnt Windsor castle to be the preferred home of the colourfully clothed, tiara-toting ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second’ and her immediate family by virtue of her monarchy; that the structure boasted over one thousand rooms; and that the land around the castle encompassed thirteen acres. Not your average little ‘long in the tooth’ shack on the hillside!

I’d also read that the Castle coveted the salubrious title of ‘Europe’s oldest occupied palace’, and that St George’s chapel, within the Castle, had played host to many a royal wedding—the last ceremony having been watched throughout the world by millions of viewers. (Funerals also featured high on the agenda.) To top it all off, Windsor Castle had been, in its day, a medieval force with which to be reckoned.

A royal roof overhead to hundreds and thousands of servants and workers over the centuries, not to mention the horses and herds of semi-wild deer which, to this day, still roam the woods and Parkland. Oh, and glorious, cascading waterfalls to complete the picture! (My favourite, out of all natural water manifestations.) No matter how you looked at it, Windsor Castle provided a right Royal treat for anyone who cared to visit. (It would be interesting to see if the flag was flying high today, signifying that the Royal family were in residence.)

The other good thing about Windsor Castle was that one need not have brought along the obligatory child in order to enjoy the castle delights. It might have been viewed by some as a Medieval Disneyland—with something for everyone, but in the spirit of equality and egalitarianism, all were welcome, men women and children alike, provided one paid the entrance fee and kept a firm reign on one’s charges in view at all times. (Many a baby had been thought to have been thrown from turrets and the narrow Windsor Castle windows over the centuries.)

Some of the other Windsor attractions, lesser known than the Castle, such as nearby Lego Land and Duplo Valley, may have looked towards Disneyland etiquette and deigned the complexes to be off limits to adults unable to hold a screaming, dangling child up to the ticket window. Of course, this hugely discriminatory practice—dissuasive towards DINKS (double income-no kids) and rich Asian tourists who had left their one child at home with grandparents—may not yet have reached the back blocks of Windsor, but if it turned out to be the case, then all the better for the Castle, which would be the only place of interest left for tourists to enjoy.

We had reached a junction sheltered from the persistent drizzle. A fork in the road. Time for the first major decision of the morning, which might need to involve sacrifice on my part. There were really only two choices. Either take to the stairs with Aston, our fearless leader, or wait patiently for the arrival of the rickety old lift. (Maybe I should have opted for a two-hour snooze in the coach after all?)

A few of the older ladies had positioned themselves in a ‘stand-in’ (as opposed to a sit-in) beside the lift, and gazing up at the thirty or so wet, circle-studded metal steps in front of me, made me think saving my legs for the climb up the hill couldn’t have been such a bad idea. I didn’t want to take up prime space in the lift when there may have been others with more pressing needs, but puffing after having walked twenty or so metres from the coach was a kind of excuse, wasn’t it? Even so, I hung back in the shadows until everyone who’d been left behind by Aston crowded into the lift, and then jumped in at the very last fraction of a second. Half a second more, and the door would have closed on my outstretched left hand and foot, and the consequences for me would have been dire.

Along with Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Prince William of this very country, I am hopelessly and irreversibly left-handed. I favour the left side, turning left at all possible times, reading and writing from the left, using my left index finger on keyboards and for scrolling on my phone and iPad and mollycoddling the left-hand side of my brain over and above the right with an almost ninety-nine to one percent ratio. Not being able to have employed my left hand (or left foot) for the next few days would have been a disastrous result and almost certainly have defeated the purpose of travelling up to ground level via the lift to save my legs.

It was a trifle crowded in the lift and even though it was only two floors up, the old