When You Know You've Done The Right Thing -
12/06/2009
Posted by Global Cool
You know those choices you make that you're not sure are the right ones? Well, today, while struggling with my bag and wellies through St Pancras on the way to get the train to Derby for the Download Festival, Global Cool's first festival outing with our new super-green GC bus, it did occur to me that being in a car right now wouldn't be so bad. It's often how I've got to festivals before, but these days it just doesn't seem like the best way forward, and that was a conclusion I'd come to before working for Team GC.
But then pretty soon, someone upstairs with more of a plan that I've got, saw fit to give me some subtle signs that getting the train was The Right Thing To Do. Maybe that person with a plan was my Mum, because she was the first to give me a sign. She called my mobile, itself somewhat eyebrow-raising, and asked me in an urgent voice where I was. On a train I said, slightly caught off guard by a question I hadn't seen coming, and more than a little panicked as this conversation appeared to have taken a sudden turn down Bad News Alley. Thank goodness she said. Eh? Why I said. Because she'd just heard on the radio that getting out of London to go north on the M1 was absolute murder. So it was good for me that I was on a train, she said, with a mixture of relief and motherly pride. Mild panic over, I had to have a Cadbury's Twirl to calm myself down.
My Mum and Neil Young might not strike you as being readily associated, and that's even though you probably haven't met my Mum (and no, Neil Young hasn't either, thanks very much). But it was Old Shaky himself that gave me the next sign of a journey decision well-made, because on my ipod up popped a song of his, called Fuel Line, which is apparently an anti-car tirade sung over a driving (no pun intended) electric guitar, with crazy ju-ju backing wailers. It's a good track and was just what I wanted to hear, not least because it meant that I and my Mum had something in common with Mr. Young.
And the third and final sign was a plethora of rabbits in fields just outside Derby. No friend of the farmer but they looked lovely from where I was sitting, hopping about on their legs like they do, and it was a sight that would have only ended in some sort of horrific accident if I'd try to take it in on the motorway, so again, I felt glad to be on the train, my feelings of satisfaction dangerously close to brimming into smugness.
Those three signs are in addition to the train enabling me to have a cup of tea and not scold myself somewhere very painful, getting half way through the NME crossword before my knowledge of late-80s super-obscure alt-rock let me down, and to actually shut my eyes in the afternoon sun when Bing Crosby's dreamlike Moonlight Becomes You came on the headphones.
And over the next few days, with the full Download experience going on around me, it's the little moments like that that'll keep me going I reckon. Fingers crossed the return journey's just as good.
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