Escape fantasies

From The Good Companions, by J.B. Priestley, 1929

He had been dozing a little but was roused by the lorry slowing down, sounding its horn, then swinging round into a road that was different from any they had been on so far. It was as smooth and straight as a chisel, and passing lights showed him huge double telegraph posts and a surface that seemed to slip away from them like dark water. Other cars shot past, came with a blare and a hoot and were suddenly gone, but the lorry itself was now travelling faster than he thought any lorry had a right to travel. But at one place they had to slow down a little, and then Mr. Oakroyd read the words painted in large black letters on a whitewashed wall. The Great North Road. They were actually going down the Great North Road. He could have shouted. He didn’t care what happened after this. He could hear himself telling somebody [...] all about it. '‘Middle o’ t’night,” he was saying, “we got on t’Great North Road.” Here was another town, and the road was cutting through it like a knife through cheese, Doncaster, it was. No trams now; everybody gone to bed, except the lucky ones going down South on the Great North Road. 

I have always had a liking for stories about people who leave home in order to start afresh: The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells, Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene, I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee ... 

The Good Companions, presumably a copy belonging to one of my parents, was the first adult novel I ever read — from cover to cover, shining a torch on the pages under the bedclothes when I was supposed to be asleep. Its descriptions grabbed my 12-year-old imagination, particularly the passage quoted above which I remember being thrilled by. Living in the north of England, I knew about the Great North Road. Sometimes we used to travel up and down it by coach, which wasn't half as romantic as the lorry ride in that book.

From an email sent to our children this week, by my husband:

When lying in bed, falling asleep, Alison imagines that she's at home, but is looking forward to a trip away. I imagine that I'm in a bed in an alien hotel, but will be going home tomorrow. Total incompatibility.

He got one thing wrong there. In my half-awake state I'm not merely "looking forward" to setting off somewhere (often clandestinely like Mr. Oakroyd) but am actually on my way, boarding pass in hand, or at least fully packed (sometimes I drift off to sleep before I've finished imagining what I would or would not take with me) and ready to step out of the door, the door being in Canada these days, though a few decades ago it used to be in Yorkshire. Or I am already on some means of wheeled transport that's rattling along, or on a rocking boat or a rising aircraft. Or I am taking shelter in some hut / barn / rocky overhang during a getaway on foot. 

The Swedish novel, Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann, by Jonas Jonasson, 2009, also known as The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, was a book I picked up at the airport once, in the English translation — for me, that was an irresistible title. I'm sure that when I'm an old woman in a care home I shall be forever plotting my escape.