Going to London

Jackie Kerr

I lived on the road that the three London National Express buses passed every Friday night; I would look at them passing and imagine the day when I was on one of them taking me to London. I couldn't wait. I was 16 working in a hairdressers, I had started as a Saturday girl which I had loved but experiments with my hair had gone too far for my school and I was asked to leave on the day of my last O-Level. I think the owner of the hairdresser felt bad about this so gave me an apprenticeship; it was so boring but I met lots of great people. I got friendly with a girl called Donna, she was a loud, bold girl, a year older and different to me but we got on well. I discussed my plans with her, I said we could move to London and get jobs in proper, trendy hairdressers or in shops on the Kings Road, we would meet famous people, and have a great time. She wanted to come with me so we saved up our wages and decided to move to London.

It was a cold bright Friday in October when we bought our tickets on our lunch break with our wages, two single tickets from Dundee to London Victoria. We planned to just leave work that day and not go back, or tell anyone we were leaving. I went home at tea time and told my mum, all hell broke loose, Donna must have told her mum about the same time as her mum phoned my mum screaming obscenities at my mum and me. My mum was the most easy going person in the world and even though she was really upset and persuading me not to go she agreed that I could. I packed an old white suitcase with a shiny blue satin lining; my mum had used this 20 years ago when she went to New York at the age of 18 to be a nanny in 1962, I suppose she must have upset her mum too. She gave me £50 and drove to the area where Donna lived, we saw her struggling with her suitcase, she was upset, my mum was upset, I was the only one really excited. Donna was dressed in a normal sensible way for travelling all night on a bus with a sweater and jeans and boots. I had on a short black frock, on old smoking jacket I had bought at a local second hand clothes market which was black snakeskin and as thin as a shirt and pointed black shoes.

I remember getting on the bus, my mum's face will stay with me for the rest of my life, she looked awful and I felt guilty but was too keen to leave to even consider anyone's feelings but my own. She waved us off, we settled down in our seats for the night's journey. I was freezing with my stupid outfit on, we fell asleep, I woke in the early hours and started to feel worried and guilty; the reality had set in slightly. I had upset Donna and her family, I had left my job and persuaded Donna to leave hers and I had upset my mum, the bus was freezing, my outfit was creased and shabby but as we got closer and closer the houses started to change. They were different to the houses in Scotland, we were nearly there, and the feelings of anxiety and guilt left me, I was too interested in what I was seeing out of the windows of the bus. We arrived at about 8am, Victoria Bus Station, we stretched our legs and went to the toilet, the one on the bus had been unusable for about 5 hours. We left our suitcases in the left luggage and wondered around the streets around Victoria looking for a place to say, but this is another day and a story to be told at a later date.