It seems I’m spending most of my life on trains. I’ve been itching to get away, literally, every part of me, arms and eyes, back of the knees, chin. Even my cuticles itch. Little things are driving me slowly crazy, here.

The calls from sellers, for example. They call at nine pm with rude disregard for continental eating times, for family brawls over knitting and scrambled eggs and the hippy woman my mother lets into our house every night to take a bath, brawls which delay first-forkful-to-mouth by hours. Or else they ring early in the morning, far too early, before the frosty window icing has had time to melt and trickle away, before the first kettle-full of water has boiled.

You always know it’s them; that excruciatingly long pause before they answer your questioning hello gives it away, and they always, without fail, mangle the family name past recognition. The variation last time was so far off the real thing - Can I speak to….Mr… Hatin Jamajingo…hoooosen? - that I feigned temporary deafness, and asked innocently for a repetition. Mr..Hartin ….. Hmahmaham..? 

So I am getting away from the sellers for a week, with cowgirl boots in my suitcase, 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale to re-plough through (and then re-re-plough), and the prospect of encounters with people I would rather never ever have to smile politely at, a prospect the thought of which leaves my heart in my mouth.