The Peel: Destination Runknown

not away, but towards

Welcome to The Peel, a weekly dispatch from the AVM patch. Dig up and sit down, before it hits the compost.

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Someone’s talking about shaving their head, someone else is taking flash photos of a boy in a T-Birds jacket. This can only mean one thing - I’m in the bar of an arts cinema, and tonight they’re showing Grease. I can hear the corridor cacophony of Rydell High through the wall.

An Erdinger sweats pleasantly in its glass, there are forty minutes until the adverts start. Sitting pretty at the in-house bar, with time in-hand to create space between life and art, there’s a certain smell to this kind of leisurely pleasure. Pace changing, time taken, not a rush in sight or mind. This, in turn, can mean only one thing. I have escaped the south of England, I am north of the border, and as the gates lifted to grant me entrance, so too did my spirits.  

Some people do up holidays so well. Able to metabolise the experience of traveling, to convert it into nothing other than more reason to relax when the destination is reached. Others thrive in the pocket of the process - tickets printed even though the electronic version will work just fine, on-train café located, seats reserved with ample time in hand. For those who identify in this camp, the meat of the endeavour - rest & relaxation - may be harder to settle into. Where do I fall on the spectrum of the above? I am changing all the time.