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I’ve been travelling for over twenty six hours. Two flights, three trains and now a hire car collected at Dover to carry me the rest of the way. It’s just gone half past two in the morning and I’ve stopped on the M1 for petrol and what feels like my millionth cup of coffee. It’s from grubby fast food restaurant and tastes foul but I drink it anyway, needing the caffeine kick. I can barely keep my eyes open; perhaps I should just give in a catch a couple of hours sleep before I hit the tarmac again. It seems silly though, when I’m so close. I should just plod on through, clear the last few miles and then when I do sleep it can be between deliciously soft white sheets that smell of lavender and with pillows as crisp and as cold as the frost outside. There I can drift off, happily, with my arms tightly wrapped the person I’ve been missing the most since I boarded the plane out of Edinburgh all those months ago.
As I sip my insult to the world of hot-beverages, I glance about at my fellow travellers. I’ve always loved service stations; even at night they remain full of life, half-way houses for hundreds of people trying, like me, to be somewhere else. I watch a lorry driver, alone in the corner, ferry a dubious looking bacon sandwich to his mouth whilst he absent-mindedly thumbs through a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mail. A few tables away is a young father, looking exhausted to his very bones and cradling his tiny daughter on his shoulder. She is sound asleep and wears a pink bobble hat that has slipped slightly so that it obscures one eye, giving her the look of a miniature blonde pirate. Next is a dishevelled business man, chugging the same horrible coffee as I am and, despite the early hour, talking loudly into his expensive mobile phone about stock prices or some other such business nonsense. Over by the door is a group of teenagers looking barely old enough to drive, all wrapped up against the fierce November air and laughing as they pass round a steaming hip-flask. Last but not least, the cleaning lady, her pinny slung over the back of her chair as she sneaks a crafty break with a magazine and a packet of custard creams. Oh, and me, all puffy eyes and crumpled skirt, sleep-deprived and in desperate need of a shower. I wonder what I look like to these people? Do I just look dog-tired, or can they tell, perhaps by the way I’ve been smiling into my coffee, that I’m uncontrollably happy?
I drain the dregs from my cup, pick up my coat and scarf and head for the door. The business man, still shouting into his phone, follows me out. He slams off toward his sleek Mercedes, business jacket and briefcase flying, whilst I wander serenely over to the rented Fiat and clamber inside. I drop my bag onto the empty crisp packets on the passenger seat, laughing at the crunch, buckle my seatbelt and kick the engine to life. I say good bye to the service station and pull out of the car park and onto the motorway, full of bustle and noise and a blaze of light. And as the miles fall away behind me, I find myself drawn, with a smile, to the tiny pin-pricks that are the street lights stretching all the way into the distance, forming a glittering gold path in the sky. They dance, twinkling, in front of my tired eyes, giving me a lease of life the coffee never managed to, and they pull me towards them, inviting me onwards to join them in the stars…
They are my own private path of light, my very own yellow brick road, but they’re better than that because they lead somewhere much, much more magical that the Emerald City. They lead to the most important place in the whole world. They lead to home.
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