Sinister: Part 1: How did those days turn into these

[Dimitra]

A few weeks ago, Will wrote: "If I start writing things down, I will get
better at putting things into words. If I start putting things into words, I
might be able to explain things a little better. If I can do that, I will be
able to do anything."
If I ever write a book, this will be on the first page.


This post has been written over a long period of time -I started it sometime
around Christmas- and in a lot of places: trains of course (there's nothing
like rail passes), people's houses, a plane, my bed, a french class, my
computer room; in conversations with friends; and in my head while I walk
the streets of several towns.

I don't like warnings, but I think I have to do this: I warn you. This is
over 8000 words. And if you find it would take too long to read, imagine
what it took me to write it.


I write this post in my head every night in bed. Sometimes I like it,
sometimes I don't. But I never really remember it well enough the next day.
I've been on a Sinister Holiday, and I want to tell you the story; but the
story is long and I get confused. One of these days I decided to start from
the beginning and talk about everything, then I started wondering what was
the beginning. Was it when I left Thessaloniki, or when I arrived in Luton?
Or maybe when I bought my ticket. Or when I started looking for a ticket. Or
when I left Scotland in the summer and I promised myself I'd come back...
Sometimes I wonder too much -and I get confused. I have a book that says
that the best point to start telling a story is the middle. The middle is a
very convenient point; it can be about everywhere. So:

Thursday, the 13th of December.
The train from Preston stopped at Haymarket before it stopped in Edinburgh,
which confused me. As it exited the tunnel between them I took my head out
of the door window and looked up, at the buildings and the lights in the
cold. They were high, wet and shiny. And looked a bit different from
anything else I had known before -different than winter in Greece and also
different than they has looked in the summer -the day of the North Berwick
picnic, when we were almost aimlessly wandering around Edinburgh. Wow, I
said to myself. I'm back.
And I remembered what Jeremy had said a few months earlier. A journey is an
illusion. For I had spent the previous 22 hours falling asleep -in trains,
taxis, a bus and a plane-, and this all brought me from Volos (where Vel had
waved goodbye to me) to Edinburgh. I thought it would be hard, it was
surprisingly easy. I looked so much like I knew what I was doing that a man
asked me for directions in Luton and an old lady decided to follow me when
looking for the right platform at Preston.
Back. Had I counted the days between the 27th of July and the 13th of
December, I would have found them 136. 136 days of dreaming of coming
back... and of not doing much else, I have to admit. But it didn't matter
anymore, because these days were over -it only took some buses, trains,
taxis and a plane, and those days turned into these. And I was *there*. This
might be the land of my dreams. Not because it is better than the one I come
from. Just because it is what it is. Or maybe just because I dream of it.
The train stopped, and I got off and walked across the platform to meet
Will, and my Sinister Holiday started.


I use the word Holiday just cause Sinister Holiday sounds good, while I find
the sound of Sinister Trip awful, though holiday is a word I don't like.
Somehow I find holidays too shallow, too silly, I don't like the concept of
escaping from your life for a while, going somewhere and having fun just to
come back and continue from the point where you left... are two or three
weeks on an island what you get for working five or even six days a week for
the rest 11 months of the year? People in Greece have this habit of wishing
each other a good winter when they come back from their summer holidays,
sometime in August usually, when the temperature is still over 30 degrees
and the first signs of winter are yet very far away, approximately three
months; what they actually mean, and they don't say it without some spite,
is 'welcome back to real life'; and it is depressing cause it means that
whatever you did on your holidays, it's not 'real life'...
When I came back to Greece in August, my mum told me -just as I had
expected- 'that's how life is, holidays end sometime', I said 'It wasn't a
holiday, it was a trip' and she said -just as I had expected- 'That's how
life is, trips end sometime too', she didn't mean she thought it wasn't
real, but it did sound like that. I sighed, thought of the months ahead, of
the exams, and started to get a bit depressed. Even though I had decided to
not let anything get me down.


A couple of hours later on that day I caught yet another train, this time to
Dundee. I caught *lots* of trains from and to Dundee. But who wouldn't?
People say Dundee is awful, ugly and devoid of anything interesting, but I
find it cute and it makes me happy in a simple way. And Rachel is there, and
Rachel is FAB and very interesting, I can assure you. Especially after a
couple of glasses of champagne.
For the first few days I didn't take any trains, however some other people
(Will and Danny) took trains to come and visit us. So we had something like
a party, which Rachel insists on calling 'weekend of educational fun'. We
were educated on how to go to the cinema, to the super market, how to cook
fachitas, how to make sangria and how to drink it (and other things) and get
drunk. And how great Rachel is drunk when she's not quiet at all. I know you
don't believe me. You should have been there to see it. You know, we had
invited you. But you didn't come. The next day we were too tired of too much
education. And of pursuing happiness, I guess. Don't ask me what this means.
You asked me to tell you the story, so I'm telling it, but I don't know
everything about it. I just know it happened. This weekend was like an
introduction to whatever was to come, telling me: things from a distance
look more scary than they really are. Just go ahead and do them. So anyway
we did nothing but walk Belle and make a mix cd, which very surprisingly
isn't crap at all. We decided we should all choose four of our favourite
songs, then we took turns to put one each on the cd. We managed to only have
two Belle and Sebastian ones on it!! And only one by Hefner! Aren't we
great?

We are, but there probably are more serious reasons. Anyway. The weekend was
over and it was time for me to ride on trains.
I went to Edinburg on Monday. Me and Will somehow started talking about
food, and he mentioned too many words I didn't know; then he tried to
explain them by using some more. So we went to a supermarket ('it's just
around the corner' -the corner being 15 minutes walk away) and he pointed at
things and repeated the words. Later on we walked halfway across the city
(damn hills) to meet princess Honey and Linda in -what Will called- a posh
pub. Posh is one of my favourite words now. Anyway it certainly was worth
it. Honey is one of the sweetest things in this cold and lonely world. And
Linda is real! When I was new to this list I used to think that she didn't
exist -that Honey had made her up just so that she could tell us off and
stay our beloved mummy at the same time. But she exists; she's very nice and
afraid of her mobile phone. They talked about the necessity of having
internet in car, then they talked about how this could be possible. And they
reassured me that it will happen in a few years. I just watched. However,
they (Will and Honey) insist they're not geeks. 'I don't like Star Wars and
I'm crap at computer games'. They even have the same excuse! What do you
think of the idea to put a webcam on a cat? I got tipsy, then got on a train
to Dundee.

On Tuesday I went to Aberdeen to meet Lyns. I enjoyed the train journey a
lot. Looking out of the window I wrote 'Scotland feels both home and
foreign, and I like that'. My mum called me and told me there was one metre
of snow in Greece. This has never happened in the last twenty years or more.
Honestly. In Aberdeen it was cold but sunny and the sky was blue. Lyns took
me to the cafe where she works, then to a computer room at the university,
and when we realised we had spent there too long, to her flat. I liked it a
lot, along with her cd collection, her living room view and the curry she
cooked. After this and even though we wanted to fall asleep on the extremely
comfy sofas, we went out in the cold again, and walked to -guess what!- a
pub!! We drank cherry beer which comes in a posh (hee-hee) bottle and tastes
funny but nice. Lyns knew I was looking for a spare ticket -I had one, but I
had promised myself I'd find one for Will. Just to prove that things he
considers impossible can happen. And cause I hate it when my friends are
miserable. And cause if I did, I'd get to keep his Christmas present. She
knew it, but she never thought she might have one. Sitting in the pub, she
said, 'I am so disappointed my friend Victoria can't come to the gig...'. I
looked at her and asked -without believing in it much, but you always have
to try- 'You don't happen to have a spare ticket, do you?'. 'I might do' she
said, and called her friend. And told me she does have one. I grinned.
Needless to say, I got tipsy; we walked back to the station. I took a train
back to Dundee.

On Wednesday I went to Glasgow. Matt was waiting for me at the station
reading the NME; he was however a bit surprised when I walked up to him. "Do
I look that twee?" was the first thing he said. "I tried not to, but I guess
I failed". I don't know what twee means. I just have a talent for spotting
listees, I made a list of all the Sinisterines I've met; then I counted the
ones I have spotted, the ones no one introduced me to but still I knew who
they were the first moment I lay my eyes on them. And found them to be 26! I
can't really explain this. But if you really ask me about it, I'd say you'd
all look slightly different than everyone else in a crowd. Or more than
slightly. In a quite similar way. I already feel bad about saying this;
please, don't think I am trying to categorise you. It's just the way I see
things.

Neither of us knew much about Glasgow. Matt took me to a record shop he had
spotted, which turned out to be the one Gavin works at. He greeted me as if
he had last seen me yesterday, which made me ask 'you remember me don't
you'. We looked around for a while -I saw a William it was really nothing 7"
and had to tell myself a lot of times that to buy it would be a waste of
money. I don't have a record player. I don't have much money. I bought the 3
6 9 seconds of light one to compensate. It was 7.5 times cheaper, I think.
Then Matt said I should decide what we would do next. And I thought it would
be better to try to do it than try to avoid it. But all I knew about Glasgow
was what Richard had showed me in July. So I asked Gav to tell us how to get
to the Lighthouse. He drew a map (crap, I still have it) and he gave us
directions, which where better, and we found it pretty easily. We climbed to
the last floor -the 'viewing platform'- and sat down on the floor -there
were no chairs, but I liked it anyway; and looked down at Glasgow as the
night was falling. Appropriately, we talked about Sinister, and wanting to
move to Glasgow. Or at least I think so. Then I decided we could walk around
till we got too cold, so we did. Surprisingly enough our steps led to the
13th Note. It started snowing just as we reached the doorstep. We went in.
We talked about Sinister, and wanting to move out of Mobile, Alabama, and
Thessaloniki, Greece. And about art. Maybe. And got a phone call from Rachel
who had locked herself out of her house. I got tipsy, we walked back to the
station -it had stopped snowing, and it was cold, but in a way I liked. It
almost always was cold in a way I liked.

"You know, the best, or the worst, I don't know, is when we talk to each
other with B&S lyrics. Like, I was having this huge fight and Will told me,
maybe you're just having a backward relationship. But Will, I said, does
such a thing exist, or are we just imagining it? What?! Will said, haven't
you heard a century of Elvis?!?!... Um, I have, I said, a bit embarrassed,
but I can't hear all the lyrics..."
" I love that, I love that, I love that."

I got on a train back to Dundee. I don't remember much about this, apart
from thinking how Matt renewed my faith in Sinister. I met Rachel at the
station, and I told her that. "I guess I should tell him that, I said". You
should, she said and nodded.


Looking at Glasgow from above I said to myself 'This is Sinister all over
again". Cause part of what Sinister is to me is taking a train to a city,
meeting someone you haven't met before and spending the day with
them -almost all the days end in pubs somehow! And I am each time a little
surprised of how I can have a good time with all those different people, who
I haven't even met before. And how it is really more than just having a good
time, how each of these days has something great in it. And what is the glue
that binds us. Whatever makes us so gosh-darned compatible, as Stacey said
once.
Stacey said that before she came over and met you, and I don't know if it
still is what she believes. Guessing I would say it certainly is partly -but
I'll quit guessing and talk about myself. Obviously I say this after I've
been over twice, and I still don't really have a clue of how to answer that
question.

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