Another World

There’s a lot to be said for living in Tasmania and I won’t bother listing the advantages here.  It’s enough to say that I’m the envy of friends across the globe who look at my world and see that I enjoy many advantages over the life that they are forced to live in their world.

 

If only they knew how I envy them in return.  There are days when I would gladly swap the clean, green environment of Tasmania for the grubby streets of Manchester or Birmingham or even Paisley in Scotland.

 

Every morning when I wake up I can’t wait to switch on the TV.  I’m not there to get the news headlines or to listen to the banter of the talking heads of Breakfast TV; instead I turn to Youtube to see what my friend, Scott, has posted overnight.

 

I’ve never met Scott, and I’m sure that he doesn’t know that I exist, but I regard him as a friend because we seem to have similar interests and I enjoy hearing how he lives his life.  I don’t know whether he is married or has any other family but his choice of life-style leads me to believe that he is alone in his world. I do know that he lives in Paisley in Scotland and is retired from some job in the travel industry.  He’s not particularly pre-possessing and has the sort of lived-in face that you might see on any Scottish street with a half-smoked cigarette hanging from his lower lip and the accent which always makes me think of Billy Connolly.  

 

Scott’s life seems to revolve around making Youtube videos of his travels and posting them on his channel, ‘Planes, Trains, Everything.’  I suspect he has been to many of the world’s top tourist destinations in his past life but that’s not what he talks about now. His world now is based around making one- or two-day trips on public transport within easy reach of his home in Paisley.  I believe what he does is called ‘vlogging’.

 

He might decide in one episode that he is going to check out a new overnight bus service from Glasgow to London, or make his way to Belfast to buy some Irish chocolate he has seen advertised. He might set himself a challenge to travel on two buses, three trains and a ferry in one 24-hour period.  He might take a flight from a tiny airport on Scotland’s west coast which only has two departure flights a day and spend an hour or two on the island of Arran or go further afield by ferry to one of the Shetland islands. For a change, as he did this morning, he might take advantage of a special fare and fly to the city of Billund in Denmark, famous for Legoland, and return via Turin in Italy, all for 21 pounds.

 

Scott’s world is a very different world from the one that I find myself in.  Of course he has the advantage of living on a small island with a population of over 67 million people and the infrastructure to cope.  And just over the North Sea is a whole continent of interesting countries easily accessible. And, how I envy him his world.  To be able to catch a train or have a choice of buses, or fly to dozens of other countries within a day if the mood strikes is the stuff of dreams.

 

Almost every interesting thing we can do in Tasmania is dependant on driving to it.  Public transport is very limited and almost useless for the casual tourist.  For a couple in their later years who are hoping to see Macquarie Harbour or Bruny Island, all I can say is, it might be easier just to watch it on Youtube.

 

Oh, how I yearn for the blessings of a proper public transport network; for the modern trains, buses, and ferries which offer the citizen with itchy feet the chance to experience what the world has to offer.

 

Yes, I know that Tassielink and Redline buses will eventually take me to Strahan and Kettering, and elsewhere but my enthusiasm is always overwhelmed by the futility of the exercise.  Who cares if it’s possible to actually experience those journeys?  Do I really want to sit all day on a bus and not be able to stretch my legs?  For long trips like that, you need railways and that won’t happen here in my lifetime. 

 

There is a reason that I regard Scott as a friend: through experiencing his adventures in another world my life is enriched and, for the same reason, I also feel an affinity with Ralph Waldo Emerson who famously said, ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.’