Cartographornication

Last week, because I am a wild rebel who leads a life of extremity and excitement, I bought myself a new diary from WHSmith.

Hold your applause; I’m not quite done yet!

For those of you who have yet to discover the delights of WHSmith diaries, they contain – as well as, you know, days and shit – a tiny, almost unreadable map of the London Underground (a Herculean task to decipher at the best of times) and – and I was surprised to find this – the skeletal National Rail map which, if you’re not aware, both displays all the major stations in the UK and makes some very dubious suggestions as to what counts as a major station.

Something I’ve been meaning to do for about seven years, and only remembered to this morning, involves going through the National Rail map and circling all the places I’ve had sex. Inevitably there will be some places NR scandalously left off the map, but then I need to use my memory for those, eh? So let’s go…

…and, just to make it that little bit more difficult, let’s go in order of frequency.

London
This isn’t actually on the map, as they’ve only listed the major termini (terminuses? No, that looks wrong.). It doesn’t list all the bits of London in which I’ve had sex – Barnet, Brent, Camden, City, Croydon, Enfield, Harrow – but then again, the tube map lists all those more accurately. Maybe that’s another blog post.*

(*No, it isn’t.)

Oxford
OXFORD! THIS IS OXFORD! THE TRAIN NOW AT PLATFORM TWO CALLS AT DIDCOT PARKWAY, READING, SLOUGH AND LONDON PADDINGTON!
Though I love Oxford – the atmosphere, the shopping, the architecture, the eateries, the bikes – and the fact that I must have had sex hundreds of times in Oxford – the thing I’ll always remember about it has to be the announcement on the platform. I did start formulating a story in my head about the Oxford announcer guy banging the Paddington announcer lady… but it never got any further than what I’ve just told you. Ay me.

Birmingham, et al.
Birmingham’s on the map, but the bits of Birmingham I’ve had sex in aren’t. I never managed to do so in the city centre, but I did so numerous times in Walsall, and once in Sutton Coldfield, so… you know… there’s that.
I don’t actually mind Birmingham as a place. It just looks unfinished. I took the coach up practically every week for a year and a half, and the area around Toys “Я” Us continued to look like a bomb site. But maybe that’s part of the charm.

Leeds
Is the closest I can get, because the little town (with a Leeds postcode) isn’t on the National Rail map. It consists mostly of charity shops and estate agents and was a bus ride away from Leeds train station.
I cried in Leeds train station after a particularly difficult time in which I was convinced I had done something terrible. I’ve never been back there since.

Bath
Now we’re into make or break territory, really, because I’m not entirely sure which of these places I’ve had sex in a few times is the most numerous…! But let’s go for Bath.
Bath is perhaps my favourite place in the UK. I can’t really pinpoint why, but I love it. On account of the fact that I went there at least twice with a highly sexual girlfriend, I’m betting that it’s next down my list. I’ll probably end up back there at some point, of course.

Brighton
Is probably next, mainly due to the same girlfriend. I like Brighton too, even though my most recent sojourn was a bit of a washout. Still, I saw Parasite there, so. Trivia tells me that it’s the only place where I’ve successfully had sex standing up, so that’s certainly worth a mention.

Bristol (Temple Meads)
“TAKE A GOOD LOOK, BRISTOL!” I shouted, standing completely naked at the window in the Radisson Blu looking at the lights twinkling around the Western night. Almost exactly twenty-four hours later I was having probably the best sex of my life in exactly the same room.

York
The last place I can think of, and the northernmost, in which I’ve had sex. I spent a week there in a hotel room with a hot girl who, at one point, woke me up in the middle of the night for sex. I mean, we did it a few times – once a day, if I remember correctly – but I remember the middle-of-the-night sex a lot more!

And the rest…

Cambridge, Canterbury (East), Marlow, Manchester (Piccadilly), Newport, Nottingham (I spent three years here and had sex only once!), Skipton, and Taunton all deserve a mention too; I think that I had sex once in each of these places, but I remember them all for more reasons than that!

Brandon and Stratford-upon-Avon aren’t on the map at all, but I’ve had sex there too!

Provence, France
Probably doesn’t count.

Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Definitely doesn’t count.