Journeys

Life’s is a journey, not a destination, they say. In fact, people don’t stop harping on about enjoying the ride because that’s more important than worrying about where you’re going to end up. Adverts and hippies are the worst offenders.

Because this just isn’t true, I’ve knocked together a haphazard little list of a few things that are about the destination.

Journeys
Journeys are never about the journey. They are always categorically about the destination. Here are some examples:

The National Express coach to Cheltenham that I’m getting at 6.30pm tonight. This will still be languidly edging its way through traffic along Chelsea Embankment at 7.30pm. I’ll probably be sat next to a fat bloke wearing a tracksuit, socks and sandals who’s consuming an endless supply of meat in pastry that smells like cooked dogs. Cheltenham has pubs and beer. This journey will be about the destination.

The cheap flight to Cyprus I’m booked on for seven o’clock on Thursday morning. Budget flights are conducted on planes that are held together with Blu-tack and passengers, livestock and rapists are forced to travel together in the same holding pen. Possibly. Cyprus has sun, swimming pools and beer. This journey is all about the destination.

The 10-hour Greyhound bus I once caught from Manhattan to Toronto. I spent an hour and a half, at night, in a dimly lit Port Authority Bus Station in New York City avoiding being stabbed in the leg with hypodermic needles before being forcibly installed on a battered bus from the 1950s driven by an alcoholic geriatric performing jazz scats. Toronto didn’t have any Americans. This journey was pretty much about the destination.

The 12-hour night flight to Mauritius I took a few years ago. Mauritius had stunning azure blue seas, postcard-style white sandy beaches and lashings of lovely sunshine. The plane on the way there had insufficient leg room, wailing brats and warm wine. Mauritius might just be the most beautiful place in the world. Mauritius Air’s planes are definitely not the most beautiful places in the world. This journey was about the destination.

Books
Reading a book could be considered an enjoyable journey. But let me ask you this: if you got to the end of ‘War and Peace’ and found someone had ripped out the last three pages, would that eight hundred and seventy-four thousand-page journey really have been worth it? No? Destination, then.

Work
Work isn’t about the journey. It’s about the destination. Getting paid, basically.

Romance
Dating isn’t about the journey, whatever anyone says. It’s about the destination. Weeks of pretending that you don’t mind shelling out for pricey bottles of rose and paying for two meals when you’re only eating one really isn’t much fun if you don’t get a girlfriend, or at the very least some sex, out of it. And who would honestly argue, and I mean if you’re really, really being honest, that sex is more about the journey than the destination? Apart from women, of course. And Sting.

There are many more examples, but I don’t have time to go in to them – I’ve got three and a half work days before going on holiday and about two weeks’ worth of jobs to cram in. It’s driving me around the bend, actually – and that’s a drive that definitely isn’t about the journey.

That’s entertainment?

The sun’s out, and that means lots of free ‘entertainment’ in busy public places. The busy public place I visited today was Lyric Square in Hammersmith. I had to go there, I was buying some lunch.

Pretty much everyone else there was buying lunch, too, queuing at various stalls at the weekly farmers’ market. Quite how many actual farmers there were among the purveyors of falafel, Japanese dumplings and cheesecake remains a mystery, but as it beats eating the same old stale triangles filled with cardboard ham, it remains a popular option.

Today was different to most weeks, though. The sun had his hat on, and so there was an entertainer there. He had a little tent set up, and a stereo that was booming out the James Bond theme tune.

“I’m an acrobat, magician, mime artist, comedian and dancer,” he boasted. Really? Is that it? What would he do, we all thought, somewhat in awe in his presence now we’d been made aware of his considerable talent.

The anticipation was palpable. How was he going to wow us? Scale a building with his bare hands? Turn everyone’s stupid bottles of ‘This Water’ into wine? Punch a lion in the face?

He did a handstand. Then a sort of press-up thing, still standing on his hands. Kind of good, if you’re trying to impress your mates in a pub, but come on. Surely you have to do better than that to keep a crowd’s attention in the middle of the day in a busy London street.

Apparently not. He walked over to the stereo and switched the Bond jingle for some futuristic-sounding noises. Then, he put on a long leather jacket and sunglasses. Okay, he’s being Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix, right. What now?

“And now, I’m going to do something not many people in the world can do.” The handstand was clearly a warm-up, I thought. Now he’s going to show us some serious moves.

He jumped up and down. On the spot, dressed as Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix. That’s it. And at one point, he actually looked in my direction and smiled, as if to say, “I know you know I’m a fraud, but I’m getting away with this, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it”.

And he’s right. He had a captive audience, people so bored in a never-ending queue to buy some deep-fried prawns that they’ll watch any old shit to pass the time.

So for anyone that was in that queue, or a similar one, that’s not entertainment. This is entertainment.