Have you ever had one of those days where people suck so much you question why God hasn’t wiped us all off the planet? My trip to Stonehenge was one of those what I call people-suck-days. And this particular day was quite the doozie too.
It all started really at the train station that morning. The whole group had actually left on time! I thought that was a good omen, until just as we’re about to board the train, two of the girls discovered they had forgotten their train tickets back at the dorms a good half hour round trip if they hurried, unless they wanted to pay about a hundred bucks to buy new rail tickets. I didn’t blame them for choosing the first option to go back. So we decided to wait and catch the later train in hopes that they would be back in time. Unfortunately, the next train arrived and there was no sign of the rest of the gang so we decided to go ahead and hop on board.
The actual train ride was pretty relaxing and uneventful. For almost an hour and a half we rode past the beautiful English countryside and fell asleep to the methodic rhythm of the train moving along the tracks.
However, when we arrived in the little town outside of Stonehenge, things took a drastic turn. We got off the train and rushed to catch the tour bus to Stonehenge. Then our professor told us that she was going to stay and wait for the rest of the group to arrive since she had seen Stonehenge before and didn’t care to repeat the trip. That didn’t exactly speak highly about the monument. Plus I had heard from other friends that Stonehenge really wasn’t all that impressive and that it was much smaller than most people thought. So I wasn’t exactly anxious to see it. But, it was one of those things that at least you can say you’ve seen and done. So I got on the bus.
That’s when we met Richard, the bus driver. Or Dick as he preferred to be known, and as would discover for very good reason. To say that Dick was the bus driver from hell, almost doesn’t do him justice. From the moment we got on the bus, Dick had such an attitude. One of the girls in our group asked him a simple question about how to get back on the bus to come home, and he so gave her such a sharp, smart-ass answer. We took our seats on the bus and Dick put on the tour narration that was supposed to point out all the historical landmarks on the way to Stonehenge. This would have been interesting save for the fact that Dick drove so stinking fast that by the time the narrator would tell us to look out the window to the right or left, the monument was long gone and we were left confusedly straining our necks to catch whatever glimpse of the buildings we could.
Dick had a serious case of road rage. He sped on the tiny two lane highways in his double decker bus as if it were a Nascar track. And whenever he had to slow down or yield to oncoming traffic he would start swearing like a sailor. Then he started swearing at us to open the windows because the bus was so unbearably hot, but what he failed to realize was that he had the heater going the entire time! Yet he was determined it was our fault that the bus was so hot even though we had opened the windows as far as possible. We were so relieved to finally get to Stonehenge and get off the bus.
Then came the ten minute walk to Stonehenge from the bus. Finally we rounded the corner and ascended the ramp to the sidewalk that led to the monument and my initial thought at first viewing the centuries old religious monument was ‘we came all this way for this?’ Stonehenge was such a let down. It was literally a pile of ancient rocks standing up right. Perhaps it would have been more fun had we been able to actually go into the structure, but there were ropes preventing anyone from getting anywhere near the ancient pile of stones. Five minutes of taking photos posing like we were holding them up or pinching them and we were all bored out of our minds.
I looked at my watch and realized if we hurried we could catch the same bus we had arrived on and go back to town. So we took off back towards the bus stop, and would have made it except that several girls discovered the gift shop. Bye bye bus. The next bus would be a 20 minute wait. So we found some benches and decided to sit and relax. A 20 minute wait wouldn’t be that bad.
Twenty minutes came and went…no bus. According to the schedule another bus would be coming along in another 20 minutes. So we waited. Another 20 minutes came and went. Still no bus. Almost an hour later we finally see the bus turning into the parking lot only to find that the driver of our bus was Dick. And Dick was in an even worse mood that when he had dropped us off. The doors of the bus opened and the four-letter words came flooding out of Dick’s mouth as the passengers on the bus hurried off the bus. Then as our group started to get on the bus, Dick turned his rage and dirty mouth on us and began cursing us out for reasons I don’t even know. This time our group decided we were going to try to get as far away from Dick as possible, so we went up to the top of the double decker bus.
The top of the bus was jam-packed with people. We found a few empty seats way towards the back and were able to sit down. Four of the people in our group were squinched together on the very back bench. Then came the fat lady. There literally were no more available seats anywhere on the top of that bus. Yet the fat lady was determined to find somewhere to sit. That’s when she spotted a tiny sliver of space between the four friends on the back bench. Anyone with half an IQ point would have been able to see there was no possible way for her to squeeze onto that bench, but she was determined. So determined that she ended up practically sitting on two of the girls. They had to wiggle out from underneath her and push against the sides of the bus to try to fit. And it was hot on that bus. Apparently Dick still hadn’t turned off the heater.
The bus made its first stop and thankfully the fat lady got off. Once the bus started moving again, one of the girls said that her pant leg was soaked with sweat from that woman sitting on her. What a horrible experience. Yet, the bus ride was long from over. Dick drove that bus about as fast as one can drive a bus that side through the winding, narrow roads going so fast that the bus was swaying from side to side so violently, people were getting motion sick. And for some reason, instead of going back the way we came, Dick took us on a scenic tour of every pig farm in that part of England. Half an hour later on this mad-roller-coaster ride, we finally were overjoyed to be back at the train station and Dick bid us good riddance is his own, British snarky way.
We had planned to proceed to Bath after that trip, but we were so disgusted with the transportation that day, we were all ready to go back home. When we met up with our professor again, she tried to talk us into going to Bath, but we were adamant. Dick had spoiled our day with his road rage. All we could think of was going back to London and being able to hang close to home after this near-death experience.
Thankfully the train ride back to London was peaceful, and we made plans to go catch a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the archaeological ruins of the Rose theatre. We looked up online what time the show was playing and where the Rose was. While we couldn’t find an exact location of it, we knew that it was right around the Globe theatre where we had visited several times. We were pretty confident we knew how to get there, so we left about half an hour before the show started to walk there. As we walked along the river Thames, we passed the Globe and began looking for the Rose. We looked at the maps and the street signs and couldn’t find any marker advertising the location of the Rose. So we just kept walking thinking eventually we would stumble across it. About half an hour past the show’s starting time, we finally found it. But the show was well underway and the ushers told us we would have to come back another night.
We were very disappointed. This was definitely turning out to be a series of unfortunate events. So now it was 8 o’clock at night and our evening plans had just gone out the window. We had nothing to do. So we decided to just go home and spend a quiet evening at the dorms. We walked along the river Thames back and stopped at the Gelatto stand for some Italian ice cream the proceeded to the underground to catch a tube back to our stop.
We finally arrive back at our stop and go to get off the busy tube when all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye I see a man fall straight back off the train to the hard surface of the platform. At first I didn’t know if he was drunk or if he had accidentally lost his balance, but he had hit the ground hard. As everyone was hurriedly pushing their way on and off the tube, my friends and I went over to help the man up and walked him to a chair. We began to ask him if he was okay and he responded that he was. But he didn’t look okay. He definitely didn’t look drunk, but he looked as if he were delirious.
The tube pulled off, and people exited the platform. It was just myself, my four friends, this poor fellow and one other young man at the opposite end of the platform left waiting for the next tube. The poor guy assured us that he was okay, so my friends and I turned to leave. That’s when we just happened to turn and look back to see the man stand up, stumble forward, and take a dive over the edge of the platform. His head and arms were hanging over the rails of the tracks. Just his legs and torso remained on the platform. Then one of the girls saw the headlights of the next tube quickly approaching. We rushed back to try to pull the man off the tracks before the tube came whizzing past. But he was in such a semi-conscious state that he was in no shape to help us as we tried to pull him to safety. The other young man on the platform saw us struggling and quickly bolted to help us pull the guy to safety just in the nick of time. No sooner did we pull him to safety when the tube sped past. Had we been just moment later, this poor man would have died.
All of us were quite shaken up by the whole ordeal. We knew this man was clearly not okay, but being in England we weren’t sure how to contact emergency services to come help. Luckily one of my friends spotted a big red help button on the wall of the tube station and called for help. We stayed with the man and watched carefully that he didn’t try to get up again until help came. A few minutes later, help arrived and we were relieved to be able to go about our way. It was such a strange occurrence, none of knew what to make of it or more importantly what had caused that man to act so strangely. It was quite a feeling knowing we had saved someone’s life, yet at the same time it was just so weird. The whole day had been a weird series of events…nothing working out as planned. It was an odd sequence of being at the wrong place at the wrong time all day only to end up being exactly where that man desperately needed us to be to save him from what would have been a very tragic, ugly, premature death.
But by the end of this, we were all so shaken up, tired, hungry, and grumpy, all we could think of was going back to the dorms and getting into the solitude of our beds and calling it a night. We had had enough strange human interaction for one night.
It was quite an experience. One that I won’t easily forget, but will probably relay many times upon arriving home.
Til next time,
Cheers Y’all
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