THE BLUE POOTLE – JANUARY 2008

By Aliya Whiteley

On Platform Nine and Three Quarters

The Blue Pootle is not about to comment on Harry Potter.

I’ve managed to avoid passing judgement on the little berk for all this time, so why should I start now, once the whole thing is done and dusted and all the characters have been married off, murdered or outed as appropriate? I have better things to do than to tell you that I knew Snape was a goodie all along and how I suspected Dumbledore batted for the pink team.

Instead I’m going to rattle on about public transport.

Amazingly enough, I don’t actually possess a broomstick, but I wouldn’t mind having a good one even if it meant I had to play that bloody stupid game Quidditch every now and again. I don’t drive and I’m not good on public transport, you see. I get confused between tickets and timetables. I might actually get on to a bus occasionally, but I have a fear of attempting to press the button to tell the driver to stop in case it doesn’t work and I look like a twit. So I never do get up to press said button, and have to hope that somebody else is planning to alight at my stop so they press the button first.

Trains are better, as they must stop at the station I’m after by law, but then I still need someone else to get up first and press the damned door button or else I can end up in Peterborough, say, or Taunton. I have ended up in both of these places before, and am not very keen to repeat the experience.

Okay, so maybe I should try to conquer my irrational fear of public embarrassment at the hands of non-working buttons rather than wishing for a flying bus to take me away, but wouldn’t a flying bus be ace? Harry Potter may have had a clapped-out flying car, but why not go that step further and travel in style? I’m not talking about a knackered double decker with a grinning Cliff Richard at the wheel here (I think I’ve just traumatised myself with that image): I’m talking Rock God Tour Bus-tastic, with a well-stocked bar, Wiis attached to plasma screen TVs, and a permanently bubbling Jacuzzi in the back.

If you’re going to travel magically you should travel in style.

So here’s my top choices for forms of magical transport:

1. By Bed. Think Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Twist the knob, lie back, and get whizzed to the stars without having to shift inside your duvet. This is how all beds should be. Although I wouldn’t want to go to the places that the kids went to in that sickly Disney film – animals playing football and bobbing along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea may look like fun on the screen, but the truth is probably a ball in the face, wet, salty hair and skinned knees.

2. By Wardrobe. Why travel at all when you can teleport? Push aside the big furry coats and find yourself in a land where fauns offer you tea and great big lions hold sway over public opinion. Just please don’t tell me I have to go all girly like Susan and Lucy during my time in Narnia. “Aslan is dead! Blub!” Oh, get over it. He’ll be back to life in a minute, all laughy and pouncy and up for larks, ready for a festival in his honour where everyone will eat chocolate eggs and… oh wait, that’s Jesus.

3. By First Class in an Airplane. Is First Class a myth or a legend? Are they really all having leg massages and rubbing caviar on their chests up there? Personally, I’ve never flown first class. I’ve always been in the peasant – sorry, economy – seats, with 0.2 inches of legroom that’s already been taken up by a lifejacket that I’m expected to blow into myself if we do all plunge into the sea at five million miles an hour. I bet first class passengers don’t have to top up their lifejackets through the pipe provided. I bet their lifejackets inflate until they are levitating over the surface of the sea, and then a little rotor appears and powers them to a safe distance from the poor scum. In fact, I bet first class passengers never crash: instead that section of the plane separates from the main body, saucer-like, and continues blithely to its destination while the plebeians all die screaming, our heads wedged in the 0.2 inches of legroom provided. But, back to the case in point and speaking of saucer-separations:

4. By Enterprise. I’m aware this is meant to be science rather than magic, but it is magic, isn’t it? S’magic. Everything about Star Trek, from the cosies to the computers. I always wanted to be a female Vulcan. Not a rubbish one with obviously fake ears, like Kirstie Alley in The Wrath of Khan, but a really cool one with mind-probing and the ability to stay perfectly logical even once a month when the hormones kick in. Or possible female Vulcans don’t get hormones. Sounds like paradise – sign me up now please.

And now I must be away, travelling back to the reality of welded Weetabix in my breakfast bowl, and my Munchie’s desire to draw crayon circles on the sofa: back to my holding pattern once more. Sigh. This may be illogical, Captain, but it’s true: the closest I get to magical travel nowadays is through my pen. How sickening.

Expelliarmus!

Word of the Day: Mascaron. A grotesque face on a door knocker.

Go here to provide the Pootle with feedback, to discuss Harry Potter and alternative methods of transportation, talk about her novels Three Things About Me and Light Reading, or simply to say hi.