We left Arboga during another hail shower, clattering away as massive empty goods trains roared through the station. "Captain Crunch!" exclaimed my colleague B, an expression of surprise she's never employed before or since. This is what touring does to your brain, mangles it. Only earlier, over breakfast, I'd deployed the word 'bush' as a sound effect for something appearing out of nowhere.
Sala promised to be bigger and more cosmopolitan than Arboga on the map. A shopping centre! Arts museums! A nearby silver mine that does tours! A positive haven of urban culture!
Maps lie. A lady at the art museum was delighted to learn we were actors, and offered us free seats at the rabbit skinning activity in the craft rooms that morning. The shopping centre had about six shops in it, not including the Sibylla restaurant. As we waited for the bus to the silver mine, a helpful local girl told us the history of the bus stop over the last five years, how the bus used to stop at a layby in the park behind us. "I used to do acting," she said, "but now I have to look after the hens on the farm." Wise choice.
More rain, more hail. The silver mine was freezing cold, although quite interesting. Twenty miles of tunnels chipped out of the rock by hand over hundreds of years, most of those pre-dynamite. Stopped me feeling sorry for myself, at any rate. Poor me, having to stay in a hotel and eat burgers and gulasch at the local hipster restaurants. Not like those lucky miners two hundred years ago, climbing into the dark, clutching burning torches in their teeth so they had two hands for the ladder, before spending twelve hours a day chipping at a burnt rock face with a rusty spike. Those were the days.
Even on the way home, when our train got cancelled and we got diverted via bus back to Västerås so we could wait three hours for a new one, it wasn't exactly hard labour. Free food courtesy of SJ didn't stop me moaning bitterly as I sipped my banana split frapino and listened to Tori Amos on free wifi all the way home. Well, the grass is always greener.
0130, it was back to the real business, changing C's nappy after a shrieking nightmare and being affectionately punched in the ear for half an hour as she settled back to sleep. Oddly, it felt like relaxing, breathing out after a long week. I'm already hungry for my next away fixture, flying off to exotic Sussex for a day-long voice job. No hotels there, mind, just lots of flights and connections. Hail too, I expect. Bring it on.
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