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Meetups

It was four o’clock in the morning and Emma was lying awake with a throbbing toothache shooting up inside her head. Thoughts of the days ahead raced through her mind. It took a while to get back into the swing of the Capital.  There had been crowds of people hanging around outside Euston Station. She’d never seen so many in the middle of the afternoon. Didn’t people have jobs to go to?

She’d planned the meetups beforehand. It was impossible to get hold of people in London at the last minute, and she had half a dozen people to see in only three days, a mixture of past work colleagues, neighbours, and fellow writers from way back when. It was a pity they came from different stages of her life and that none of them knew each other.  Otherwise, she could have doubled them up.

On the first day she’d planned to see the Whistler Exhibition at Tate Britain with her ex-neighbour Michael. She was determined to get at least one gallery visit in on this trip. People in London didn’t realise how lucky they were to have culture on their doorsteps.  In the evening, she’d booked for a seminar with her friend Jane at some academic institution in Bedford Square. The talk was on the subject of colonial map-making which sounded pretty dry.

‘That’s not the point,’ Jane said. ‘There will be drinks afterwards, possibly even food.’ She had forgotten that Jane had a nose for sniffing out free food and wine at cultural events.

On the second day she would be meeting an ex-colleague in Ealing. He couldn’t manage the tube anymore. Gone were the days of free entry to the Royal Academy on his membership card. Thankfully, the Elizabeth Line was open so she wouldn’t have to trundle along on the District Line stopping at every other station. 

What she hadn’t planned for was this throbbing sensation going right up inside her head.  When she looked in the mirror, she saw that the whole right side of her face was swollen. It had been coming on during the journey down, but she’d managed to keep it at bay by dosing herself up with paracetamol. But now the pain was back with a vengeance, and she was up to the limit of paracetamol. So straight after breakfast, she dialed 111 and, miraculously within the hour, they’d fixed her up with an NHS dentist just down the road in Holborn. There they gave her an Xray and a prescription for antibiotics.

 By the time she’d been to the chemist for the pills, she realized she would be late for the Tate Britain rendezvous, so they settled on Tate Modern instead. She could practically walk there, she mused. She liked walking in London, anyway. It gave you a chance to take things in; to reminisce. London had changed though. There was this barrage of people walking straight at you, with their eyes glued on their phones. And nobody waited for the lights to turn green.  No doubt they knew how to time it, but she didn’t fancy being run over, even if it risked identifying her as a stranger in town. Bus routes had changed too, and the stops were further apart. She ended up walking to the Aldwych and then to Temple Station, before taking the tube to Blackfriars.

‘Let’s start at the top and work our way down,’ Michael suggested as they reached the gallery. ‘That way we can see something on each of the four floors.’

On the top floor there was a Light Show by Julian le Parc. The flashing lights  dazzled her and the dangling multi-coloured glass prisms made her feel dizzy. She was already missing the Whistler and suggested having a sit-down and a catchup. Michael had a lot more energy than she had, and soon they were off again to see a retrospective about a female Cuban artist, who she’d never heard of and who had an affinity for blood, which made her feel queasy.  She was relieved when Michael suggested a coffee in the members’ café, with its fine view of the London skyline.  At least that gave them some perspective on the city. They had to skip the next two floors as it was time for her to set off for her evening assignation.

Google said you could walk across the Millenium Bridge to St. Paul’s, then pick up a Number 25 bus all the way to Bedford Square. Only she couldn’t find a No 25 bus stop anywhere and ended up walking all the way to Ludgate Circus, then along Fleet Street to the Aldwych and was halfway up Kingsway before she found a bus that was going her way.  Confounded by the Google map, she walked round three sides of Bedford Square before she found the right place. Map reading had never been her strong point.  The talk was just beginning as she shuffled her way in and plonked herself down on the first available chair. She prided herself on managing to stay awake for the two hours. It was a worthy subject concerning the artificiality of borders created by colonialists who so often disregarded local populations and wildlife.

Time for a drink and some food. So, she headed downstairs to meet up with Jane. Unfortunately, they hadn’t provided drinks this time, and because of the antibiotics she couldn’t drink. Not to be phased, Emma found herself engaging in conversation with complete strangers on all sorts of topics while Jane worked her way through the ample supply of wine.   By the time she reached her accommodation that night, her pedometer registered six and a half miles, more than she ever walked at home. Through a combination of exhaustion and antibiotics, she fell asleep within minutes.

She was woken too early next morning by an email message concerning her next meet-up.

‘Sorry, I’ve mislaid my phone,’ it read. ‘So, I’m afraid we’ll just have to hope that our trains run smoothly.’

This sounded ominous so as a precaution she got to Ealing Broadway Station half an hour early. There was only one exit, so she positioned herself outside the station but in full view of the ticket barrier. That way she would be able to see Dave coming from all directions. An hour went by, an hour of looking this way and that. She was on the point of giving up when she decided to take one final look inside the station. There he was standing dutifully in front of the ticket barrier. How could they have missed each other? 

‘Where have you been?’ he said, accusatively. ‘I’ve been here the whole time.’

‘And I’ve been looking for you the whole time,’ she said.

Time was short and there was no point in arguing about whose fault it was.  They headed off in search of his favourite restaurant where she made the mistake of ordering roast chicken rather than fish pie, forgetting the dentist had told her to chew on one side of her mouth.  

She was glad she’d made the effort though. Finally, she could relax. He was someone she saw eye to eye with. They shared a view on the sorry state of the world, even though they didn’t always share the same political perspective.   

‘Have you seen what it says in the Metro today?’ he said, passing the paper across the table to her. ‘AI is going to kill us all off within the next few years.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she said. But she could tell he wasn’t.

Then they both burst into spontaneous laughter. What else could you do?  

About the author

Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories.' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford. 

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