I know it's all relative but...
If somebody tells me they've come a long way, I really expect them to have traversed a greater distance than that from Surrey to Central London.
I don't think this is just the research-travel snobbery of one who has made intercontinental trips to look at archives.
Whence, o gentle readers, would you consider a journey to London to be a long way?
I'm thinking, oh, for example, Penzance, Cumbria, Durham, within England.
And, okay, there is absolute distance and there is distance as calculated by how long your mode of transport takes to get you there, which is why I am planning on going to a friend's inaugural lecture at Cambridge next week, since I realised that I have ventured to parts of London which involved a longer and more complicated journey.
And okay, when I lived in suburban north Surrey it seemed like the ends of the earth, but that was down to local ambience when you got there, rather than distance from the metropolis (which as I recollect was 35 minutes max from Waterloo).
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If you thought that the tango version of Huis Clos was not exactly in harmony with Sartre's original concept, see this and weep:
The Bovary Tale: A musical adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
Any reports of small earthquakes in Rouen as Gustave turns in his grave?
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