Starlight Express

1984

When I was a single traveller not knowing where I was going to sleep at night made waking up more exciting. Later in life, married to someone more responsible than me, I relied on unexpected events during the day to add excitement.

July 1984. We woke up in Canterbury for another sun filled day touring jolly old England. The venerable cathedral was the main attraction. This was to be the last day in the rural regions. Tomorrow we'd drive to London for a last few days searching for the Holy Grail.

By the time we finished lunch we ran out of things to do. We had seen all the cathedrals we could stomach. We had seen enough quaint country markets fine tuned for tourist pesos, drachmas and deutschmarks. Reading a chapter sitting on a five hundred year old oak bench in another exquisite garden was beyond our need to relax and soak in enlightenment atmosphere.

What to do? London was only two hours away in the Vauxhall but we didn't have a reservation and the Internet, Expedia and smart phones were still twinkles in Silicon Valley eyes. We had tried to get a room for that night when we were in London a week earlier but it was, as they say, overbooked already.

My recklessness always butted heads with Margie's measured approach. I suggested that we should head to London that moment. It was Sunday. Traffic would better than Monday morning. I believed we would be lucky and find a good enough room near a train station. It wouldn't be first class. It would be okay for one night. And we could squeeze in dinner and one extra night at the theatre. What could go wrong?

While Margie thought there was no way we would get to the theatre her calculation included a better drive on Sunday, a good dinner and the remote possibility that we wouldn't have to sleep in the car. London being huge was sure to have a bed, somewhere, for her at least. I could sleep rough in Hyde Park. That would make her happy and be appropriate pay back for the anxiety I was generating.

The only thing that went wrong was the traffic. Who'd have thought that driving into London on a Sunday night was like driving into Toronto from Muskoka. The trip to the train station took three hours. I don't remember which station. Along the way I joked, as I always do, “with my luck we'll end up with a nice hotel and tickets to one of the best shows in the west end.”

I was right this time. There were a number of  vacancy signs. We found a nicely sized if somewhat dated room. Margie remembers it as being someone’s basement. Nothing you'd ever get thru a travel agent but heaven to a former backpacker.

We weren't far from the theatre district. It was too late to get any good seats we thought. We'd walk over to see what was going on and if nothing jumped out at us we'd splurge at an upscale curry house and declare victory no matter what.

Not too many minutes later, having not had the time to change from our travel clothes, we were walking past the box office for Starlight Express. It was among the hottest shows in town and on the planet. There was lots of milling about and one neatly formed line at the rush ticket window.

The line was all young people. We were dressed right. They were students and maybe some on the cheap travellers. With a few questions we learned that if any rush tickets came available they'd be ten pounds, a pretty good price for the hot ticket. We were the fourteenth and fifteenth  people in line. We figured we had a poor chance to get tickets but the wait would be short so we planted our feet at the end of the line.

Very soon there was a buzz. Some tickets were available. Word moved quickly. The available tickets were not rush seats.  They were two seats in the inner circle. But they were 32 pounds each. Lucky for us that was unaffordable for everyone in front of us. And ten minutes later my luck had proved to be excellent once again. We were seated in virtually the front row of a sold out performance.

And I had my very unexpected event for the day.