"I guess when you put it like that..." she said thoughtfully, and nudged her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Half my life is probably still at home in Australia. But everything I brought here to study I've either sold off or is in that bag. I did get one of my college friends to hold onto my text books for a year or until I send for them. I imagine by that time I'll either be back here refreshed and ready, or I'll have decided I want to do something else." She shrugged easily in her stripey top.

"I like writing, but it feels like there's always so many distractions or things I'm 'supposed' to do. So I'm bringing a notepad and some pencils, a couple of childhood memories I couldn't just sell off and a radio. There's bound to be something to listen to, wherever we are, and I want to hear that change. Even if we can only listen for a bit every day to save batteries."

She hadn't thought about packing snacks, having the vague idea that she'd buy them as she needed them and they would probably get cheaper the further they went. But... "Which books did you bring? And what's a Kofiko?"

Debbie stood up as she answered, reaching up to her backpack and turning it towards her in the storage compartment so she could just barely reach inside, and, perhaps, reach some of the content near the main opening. "Books... I have, um, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', the other is 'My Michael' by Amos Oz. I am hoping to trade them when I'm done. If I they survived my packing... hmm, ah - here we go!"

She pulled out of the bag a small stuffed monkey that had obviously seen better days, and from the look of it - was no stranger to being stuffed into a backpack. She held it up in her left hand, at about the height of her face, and used her index finger and thumb of her right hand to hold its hand and make it wave at Jen. "Kofiko" she said, "Meet Jen. Jen, meet Kofiko".

Oh!

"Hello Kofiko," she said with a small laugh, waving back at the little monkey.

"It will be good to have you travelling with us and watching our backs." Her eyes gleamed and she nodded to the books as well. "That is a wonderful idea. I'll try to find a book or two I can get cheaply in London and squeeze them into my bag. I don't think anyone would want to trade for one of my text books," she laughed. And besides, she would probably need them when she came back to Do The Right Thing.

Once she was properly living, and felt like an adult rather than a schoolgirl trying her best to blend in and hoping that no-one would notice she didn't belong. She'd always been lucky so far, but it wouldn't last. Couldn't last.

She forced down her anxiety and took a deep breath, then stood and rooted around in her own bag for a lump of clear crystal about the size of her fist and (from inside a wound pair of white socks) a lovely carved wooden wren in a deep red.

"This is something my dad made for me when I was little. He doesn't have a name, or none that felt right," she smiled quickly, "but it was... yeah. I just couldn't make myself sell him or leave him behind."

The labourer interrupted them at this point.

"Personally, the Costa del Sol will do for me. Rather not get malaria or some other junk from those unwashed Bombay beggars. If you excuse me, I need the loo."

He picked up his newspaper and left the compartment. Outside the window, they passed a station called Taplow.

"Oh, it's pretty!" Debbie said, carefully placing the stuffed monkey on her seat next to her rather than stuffing it back into her the darkness of her bag.

"I wish I had been so talented to be able to create such pretty things".

Her eyes briefly follow the man as he exists with that 'too much information' expression flashing briefly on her face.

"Think we've upset him?" she asked, not quite sure what - if any - they could have said to upset him. Perhaps it's just that the locals like their train rides to be quiet. She shrugged as if answering her own question, and leaned back in her seat, crossing her legs and fixing the dress around them. Her eyes drifted to the changing scenery outside the window. "Seems like I'm almost back to where I started" she noted.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:10, Tue 15 June 2021.

"Thanks!" Unlike the monkey, the wren went back in her bag before she sprawled back in her seat.

"Yeah, Dad is always working on something in his shed, but the Wren was a gift. Not my talent, you know? I'm better with words. Writing them, I mean," she explained awkwardly.

She glanced out the window as the train rattled over a bridge, then held up the lump of crystal to catch the sunshine. The light went through it just so, sending out scattered rainbow beams to splash against the far wall of the compartment.

At least until a cloud passed across the sun.

"Every time," she sighed.

"I can't wait to see the horizons open up again. Everywhere here feels... close, like the centuries and towns are being all jammed in on top of each other. Does that make sense?"

"Oh, I love urban settings" Debbie said. "It's not that I don't appreciate nature, or I wouldn't go on this trip, but I feel comfortable knowing there's civilization nearby. Somewhere to buy coffee, cigarettes, and a chocolate bar"

Her eyes drift back to Jenny away from the changing scenery outside where the constant spacing between electric poles combined with rhythmic rattling of the train on the tracks briefly caught her in an almost hypnotic hold.

"I wonder what types of people will join us"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:09, Tue 15 June 2021.

"We can compromise then," she laughed.

"A little cafe in the middle of nowhere that does smokes and chocolate, tea and coffee, but you can step off the verandah and the horizon stretches on to forever. My family went on holiday inland once when I was little, over the Great Dividing Range and we went horse riding in the Centre. Past all the forests and the towns and the cities, there were just low shrubs and grasses and a little creek and miles and miles of baked red earth. The sky was so blue you could swim in it, and the horizon... it felt like you could see to the edge of the world and there was just nothing between you and it."

She thought about Deborah's speculation. "All sorts I hope. If we're going on this adventure together, it would be rad to see everything through lots of different perspectives. That's why it's so important to go," she reflected.

"You read the travel stories in the magazines and they're all packaged, parceled, sanitised, and they tell you what they want you to see and how they want you to think about it. Seeing it with our own eyes, seeing how it really is and talking about that with people who see things differently... that's more real, don't you think?"

"The Great Dividing Range?" Debbie asks, "Hmmm, what's that? I think I should know anything with 'The Great' is it's name... The Great Gatsby, The Great Barrier Reef, Catherine the Great..."

She nodded at Jen's last comment. "For sure there's a difference between reading and seeing pictures or movies, and actually going there. I think that the most interesting things are sometimes those that on one writes about in magazines. Like... I don't know, like what school children eat for lunch in Kabul, or what bedtime songs would a Bombay grandma sing to her grandchildren"

Jen laughed in appreciation, "I recognise two of those at least - Gatsby and the Barrier Reef. But Catherine the Great? What was she Great for?" Back to cases though.

"The Great Dividing Range is like..." She raised a finger and stood back up to her overhead bag, getting out her coat and laying it across her lap once she sat and had a lap again. "Okay, imagine this is the east coast of Australia," she began, drawing one line of the coat up into a curve.

"And imagine there's a loooong mountain range about... here," she said, raising up a bulge into a crinkle fairly close to the 'coast'. "And everywhere on this side," she drew her fingers down the right hand side where her coat lay across her lap, "there's rain, and things are pretty green. And everywhere on this side," she drew her fingers down the left side of the crinkle, "it's all dry and flat and stretches out forever. And that's the Great Dividing Range," she grinned.

"No one accuses the Australians of being super creative when it comes to names I guess."

She much preferred the compartment now it had a Deborah in it and the laborer had left.

"Catherine? Oh, um, she was the empress of Russia like two hundred years ago, I think. You just gotta admire a woman that can take power over a country like Russia, right? I mean, I have a hard time arguing with the cashier if he gives me the wrong amount of change"

She watched with some interest as Jen visualized the geography of Australia using her coat, leaning a bit over to get a better angle. "So, emm, the mountains block up the clouds leaving everything on the other side to kangaroos and poisonous snakes and doctors in helicopters?". She laughs softly, "I know. That was a massively ignorant thing to say and I hate it when people do it to me, but I admit my knowledge of Australia is limited to these little tidbits... Well, those and the Bee Gees. I guess, um, part of this trip is also to educate myself, right?"

"Oh! Yes, that's rad I guess," Jen said with surprised interest. "It's cool that the Russians all listened to a strong woman like that. You said they had an Empress then? Were they still Red, or was that only later on?"

She tried to imagine the communists having an empress. Her dad said they hated all royalty and people earning their own money and wanted to see them all murdered, but that sounded all hateful and angry; she hadn't met anyone who was really like that. So maybe it was all like just the same as being foreign? People just had to get to know each other and they'd all be cool together. Get each other. Be friends.

Like she and Deborah.

"It's fine," she laughed. "That's kind of why I came over here too. Except I'm more interested in educating myself than in being good little school girl sitting and listening to what the man tells me right now. Where are you from Deborah? I don't have much of an ear for accents, but you don't quite sound like a Pommie."

"Pommie?" Debbie asked, something confused, "Or did you say Commie?".
Perhaps the recent discussion of Russian monarchs had made her suspect for having such roots? Perhaps it's better not to comment anything more about the timeline of communism in Russia.

"I'm actually British through my dad - they call it British by descent - but, um, I was born and raised in Israel, if you wonder about my accent. But last year I've been mostly in Slough".

She offered a small smile, "Oh, and people around here seem to prefer calling me Debbie so I kinda got used to that name too"

After passing through a wooded area, they crossed the boundary into the recently created local government area of Greater London and were now firmly into the second most populous city in Europe, only beaten by Paris at this point in time.

It was a warm sunny day and a person standing still could see a mild haze... while not seeing fairly high levels of air pollution, something the diesel locomotive hauling this train was arguably adding to in a small way. Although perhaps not as much as the power stations.

They started to slow down a bit... then quite a lot. They came to a stand in a platform, where a sign said 'Ealing Broadway'. A bare metal Underground train sat in one of the other platforms, a pair of Tube staff taking a look at something on a door.

With no public announcement system in this carriage, they would have to wait for the train to move again... or see what the guard said.

"Oh! No!" Jennifer went bright red, waving away the question and the suggestion. "No, it's just what we call English people sometimes. It's not meant to be an insult or anything, and it's super peachy keen that you grew up in Israel. What's it like there? I've always wondered and I've never been. And I'll call you Debbie then, or do you prefer Deb or Deborah?"

The train had pulled in to the station and she peered out the window, wondering what was going on outside. The Tube staff? "I wonder what's going on over there. Oh, I'm Jen or Jennifer, I don't mind which. Or did I already say that?" She waved that aside as unimportant. "Let's see how long we're going to be here, or what the guard has to say."

"After a year here I'd say that things are, um, quite different, but often not where people most expect them to be?" she says, ending her statement with something that asks more like a question. "If after this trip you are still curious and have energy, many kibbutzim are in constant search for volunteers".

Her eyes follow Jen's to the happenings, or rather non-happenings, outside her window.
"I hope we're not late?" she asks in a worried tone. "First, getting on the wrong train, now a delay?"

After a couple of minutes, the train started to move again. There was no explanation as to what had happened. They continued to travel east, passing various industrial facilities and smaller stations. As they passed Acton Main Line, both of them realised from previous visits that they were nearly at Paddington and it was time to gather their belongings.

Debbie sighs a sigh of relief as the train begins to move, returning her attention back to the outside view as the environment rapidly changed before her eyes.

As the train approached her final destination, she collecting her things and got up and started the effort of trying to pull her bag back out without it falling over her - or any of the other passengers nearby.

With only two people in the compartment, it was easy for Debbie to retrieve her bag. What was less easy was opening the door. You had to lower the window, reach out, turn a handle and then pull the door away from you...

After a brief struggle, a young British Rail employee moved forward to assist her.

"Can I help you, miss?" he asked.

Paddington station was a vast open train shed, originally designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel; the glass panes in the roof possibly needing a bit of a clean after decades of soot and fumes hitting them. There were a reasonable amount of people coming off the train, heading for the ticket barriers where they would surrender their small bits of cardboard to the collector.

Debbie got through with no issue... then almost had a nasty encounter with a small vehicle pulling trolleys containing food. Fortunately, he saw her in time.

There was a poster visible for something called Godspell on at the Wyndham Theatre.

OOC: An image of Paddington from 1972: on a strike day mind!
https://www.alamy.com/stock-ph...y-14th-10327688.html

The first British production of Godspell had future pop/glam rock star David Essex as Jesus and Jeremy Irons as John the Baptist and Judas.

This message was last edited by the GM at 19:56, Fri 20 Aug 2021.

Sadly enough, Debbie found herself alone again after Jennifer got sick and had to be taken to the hospital for a checkup. Better here than on the road, she thought, yet it was a bit disappointing to have found and lost a new friend so quickly.

"Ok" Debbie said to herself out loud, probably inaudible to anyone else anyway due to all the noise and commotion. "Circle Line" she repeats her instructions and tried to locate said line, ideally with bumping to as few people as possible with her backpack as she rushes through. She wasn't quite sure how late she was, if at all, so it's better to be safe then sorry.

Usually she'd stop and make fun of some of the line or station names ('Knightsbridge'?
'Elephant and Castle'? really?) but she was short in time so she focused her search on the finding the Circle which should bring her, assuming she got on it using the right platform of course, to Victoria.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:34, Mon 23 Aug 2021.

The London Underground was a very well signed posted network in general, with handy diagrams on the walls showing which stations were served in that particular direction.

The ticket machines consisted of a batch of different machines with different prices and the names of the stations associated with each; a board also directed her to the right machine.

After following the signs to the Circle Line via Victoria, handily enough, she found herself on a large fairly open platform area, where two tracks sat between two platforms, partly exposed to the elements and with sunlight coming down through a glass roof. It looked rather different to the claustrophobic narrow tunnels she'd seen in the books... but perhaps those were elsewhere.

OOC: She's on the Victorian 'sub-surface' lines rather than the later deep level ones, like the Victoria Line which has just been finished as of 1972.

Balancing her bags to the past of her abilities, she waited for what would, hopefully, be the correct train to bring her to her destination. Sure, the trip wasn't going as smoothly as she hoped so far, but such a trip is not to be expected to go smoothly according to a specific and meticulous plan even though it did originate within England. If even someone like Phileas Fogg  couldn't make a carefully planned trip work without a hitch, what chances does a girl like her have, with more experience of 'winging it' than of 'following through' throughout her life, from school to military service and beyond.

So... she waited. Ready to basically throw herself onto the first train that reaches her destination, least she won't be able to get in with all her bugs.

A pair of small lights in the tunnel indicated that a train was approaching the station. It emerged and looked to be a relatively new affair, with a bare metal body and a black roof. Each of the carriages had four doors to them and when the train came to a halt in the platform the doors slid open with a firm clunk. A train guard stepped down from the rear of the train to monitor the situation as some passengers got off, including two black men carrying sports bags and a South Asian woman wearing a hijab pushing a pram.

It was then a case of Debbie stepping up and finding a seat in one of the bays inside.

Debbe did her best to hurry past the people disembarking while trying hard not to crash into one or accidenty hit them with her backpack and other belongings, as she once again tries to find a place to store them all somewhere inside the cart where they woud be safe from falling over yet readily available when her stop finally comes. It shouldn't be many stops, she realized, so she kept herself on edge, always looking to see what the next one might be.

She would make little conversation in this short ride out of fear of yet again making a mistake that might cost her the trip.

It wasn't exactly a problem for Debbie. The London Underground was never the world's most conversational environment, passengers would generally focus on their newspapers and try not to draw each other's gaze.

Eventually, she arrived at Victoria, finding herself in a two-track underground station with platforms on each side. Time to follow the way out signs...