Sunday 6 August, 1425 British Summer Time, British Rail Southern Region train from Folkestone Harbour to London Victoria

She had managed to slip on board the train after a row had broken out between two staff members while loading the large amount of luggage that had come off the ferry into the dedicated vehicle for this purpose. Anais hadn't heard what the row was about or how it was concluded because she had bigger fish to deal with.

Having hitchhiked to Calais, she had only paid for the ferry to Folkestone, where she had breezed through Immigration with a dash of Gallic charm. Now she was violating one of the byelaws of the British Railway Board by travelling the rest of the way to London without a ticket.

Her artistic knowledge put the electric multiple train at around 15 years old; the wood panelled interiors of the 13-carriage long formation suggested 1950s, even if the grey and paint job was a good deal more modern, along with the rather strange double arrow image that popped up all over the place.

Including on the mirror in the small toilet that she was now hiding in. Outside, only a small circle allowed her to see through the privacy material attached to the glass window as they rattled along at a steady pace. Outside, a gentleman was talking in French about his plans for his stay in London. There was an exhibition of treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun at the British Museum that was by all accounts a very hot ticket.

Then he turned around and knocked on the door.

"<<Are you done yet?>>," he barked in French. "<<You've been in there for nearly ten minutes!>>"

In the mirror, Anais looked at herself, took a deep breath and tried to steady her pencil-wielding hand. With an elbow propped against the toilet door to mitigate the train vibrations, she took another look at the bags under her eyes, then started camouflaging them under eyeshadow.

She hadn't slept the previous night, or the night before. The latter because she was planning her escape, and the former because, well, rent was due. And she wasn't planning on paying. Even if she had wanted to, that money was now in the pocket of a certain monsieur Webère, of London. Meaning she had slipped out of her garret in the cinquième in the small hours of the morning of the 5th of August, while her flatmates were still out drinking somewhere in the Quartier, and lugging her rucksack she had said her silent goodbyes to the river and the bridges, the drunk and asleep, and made her way to the rive droite.

A train from the Gare du Nord would have been the sensible choice - again, had she had the money. Instead she hiked a ride in a heavy truck, hauling machinery to Picardie. The man reeked of cheap Calvados but he was a passable conversationalist. That had made the five hour drive to Calais slightly more bearable.

Slowly, she drew a heavy black line, holding her breath... almost done...

There had been no way to avoid paying the ferry, naturally, so she had resigned herself to that, and to a terrible British sandwich as breakfast and lunch - a sign of things to come, now that she was amongst les Anglais. Naturally, the first thing she did once on Her Majesty's soil was hop on the train to London, without a ticket. Almost a patriotic duty. Remember Jeanne d'Arc.

And she was hungry again, but bugger if she was going to look less than presentable, if only the damned train stopped shaking like an old grandma... ah, now, they were stopped at some point in Kent. Time to finish her make-up routine and...

"Zut!" Some idiot had to bang on the door right then, causing her to do some abstract line art on her eyelid. Fuming, she opened the door to confront the man on the other side, voice taut with fury, barely restrained under the Parisian accent.

"Perhaps monsieur Tutankhamun could go find himself another toilet, instead of ruining a lady's beauty routine? Assuming he is a gentleman, or perhaps he's just English."

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Let's say blue is dialog in French.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:50, Tue 08 June 2021.

The man on the other side looked like a bit like a younger version of late General de Gaulle. Only with less hair. And more girth.

"The other one is occupied, mademoiselle. Anyway, there may be other old mummies who need to use it. I will give you five minutes and then I'm calling the guard. Understood," he replied with an accent that sounded Swiss and rather tired. It was quite possibly he had been on the overnight train from Bâle [Basel] and not slept particularly well.

At that point, a middle-aged woman could be heard also speaking in French.

"Maurice, what on earth are you doing?! Get back here at once!"

Maurice huffed, muttered a vulgarity that implied Anais worked in a brothel, and then walked away.

Of course he had to look like the old fascist with the ridiculous moustache, so much the UNR Anaïs wouldn't have been surprised if he had a full-sized Croix de Lorraine up his butt.

"Perhaps you have not noticed this one is also occupied, monsieur," she replied in the driest of tones, exacerbating her own Parisian accent. Which was acquired, naturally, after years away from Provence, but so far superior to any petit-suisse he ought to shrink in shame and flee. Well. That was the idea, in any case. "By a lady. I suggest you go bother whoever is occupying the other one and..."

Then she heard the wife calling, and she spoke a little louder.

"Madamme, your husband is trying to force his way into a toilet occupied by a woman! Tell him to behave or I will be the one calling the guard!" she exclaimed, sounding every bit like the offended bourgeoise this time.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:46, Mon 14 June 2021.

The door to the other cubicle opened at this point, revealing a middle aged man in a short-sleeved shirt with one of those string ties that were intrinsically associated with Texas.

He took a look at her.

"Do you speak English?" he asked in a rather loud drawl. "I do not speak French, but that did not sound pleasant."

Anaïs took a long look at the newly materialised American (presumably) and took her time to reply.

"I do speak English, naturalie," she replied in a characteristical lilt, all the vowels tellingly French, all the emphasis naturally falling on last syllables. Then she noticed she had used almost the same snappy tone as she had used to shoo away the Swiss man, and her voice smoothed to a more friendly register.

"The man was rathère unpleasant himself, he only got was was comingue to him," she said casually, a hint of a smile on her lips, as if to suggest the petit-suisse had gotten off lightly, after all, and all thanks to her kindness.

"This might be England, but damnède if I will be bullied by some... paysan" she gave up trying to come up with the English word for it.

"Well, as long as you're OK, ma'am," the Texan man replied and then headed off.

The journey continued and Anaïs did not encounter any more difficulty for a while. If she wanted, she could head for the buffet car and get something from there; she still had over an hour before they were due to arrive in London.

Fortunately, she had not had to change her watch; the British were on Daylight Savings Time at the moment and so on the same time as France.

[OOC: Most of Western Europe did not start using DST until after the 1973 oil crisis]

The initial plan (if you could call that a plan) had been to enscone in the toilets and stay there, avoiding the ticketmat or whatever the British called their Trainführers. But the rumbling in her stomach was becoming louder, and once she had done her makeup to her satisfaction, she found it rather boring to just stay there.

And if there was one thing she wasn't going to tolerate, it was boredom. She was planning on being hungry, sweaty, unwashed and probably high, sometimes or often during that trip - but had she cared for the ennui, she would have stayed at her Parisian garret.

So with a sigh Anaïs shouldered her backpack and made her way to the buffet car, following her nose. Her last real meal had been dinner the previous night, and that was hundreds of miles away, in a previous life. The awful sandwiches at the ferry had been her only food since then (if you wanted to be very generous with the definition of what was edible nourishment), and while the money problem persisted, the hunger one felt more urgent at the time.

She'd decide what to do once there. Surely there had to be some way to trick the hapless Anglais of some free food? Or how was she expecting to survive in the Orient if she couldn't bum a free meal in a British train, the tamest of tame environments? She stood a bit straighter, taking a good look around. Modest as it was, this was adventure too, wasn't it? She was being too burgeois for her own good. Knock it off, Anaïs. We're here to live on our wits and resources, not to rely on conventionalities like all the pompous apparatchiki at the PCF who talked big and accomplished small...

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I have just realised I never described how Anaïs is dressed today! If I am going to steal looks from Jane Birkin, I might start with the very first day (pictured here in 1970, sans Serge Gainsborough). England is not Cannes, but I hope I don'r regret the summery style.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:45, Sun 20 June 2021.

The buffet car was in the middle of the train and there was a small queue of people heading up to the counter. Anaïs could see various beverages were on offer, and there was the distinctive smell of meat being cooked on a grill...

Her stomach growled at the smell of hot food. Did it really smell all that delicious, or was she just starving? It didn't matter, for the result was the same - she hovered about the place, looking for suitable prey - some nice young gentleman who might be amenable to lively conversation over a scrumptious meal. Nice, young, and with the means to pay for it, mais oui...

A pair of young long-haired likely lads dressed in T-shirts and jeans were sitting at one of the tables in the buffet car, discussing football over some beer and the remains of a couple of chocolate bars, one of them labelled "Marathon".