Ben Machell drifts off to fantasy land to cope with his commute

Our columnist's bit on the side
Ben Machell29 September 2016

One of the best things about having a fairly long, fairly boring daily commute is that, over the years, it’s given me plenty of time to develop a series of highly detailed and elaborate fantasies.

Your initial reaction might be to think, hmmm, that sounds totally creepy. But it isn’t. Honestly. I don’t know why I’m being so defensive because everybody, now and then, drifts off into a quiet reverie in which they imagine their lives taking exciting turns. Often these fantasies are fleeting and fairly shallow: you knock into Ryan Gosling in the Pret queue, coffee is spilled, flirty jokes are exchanged, one thing leads to another and you’re in the middle of an incredibly powerful but also highly tasteful bedroom scene when you realise your bus stop is coming up.

Or you see Spencer Matthews from Made in Chelsea about to attack a group of primary-school children, so you have to intervene and unleash some proper Enter the Dragon-style beats on him while onlookers cheer and film it. I suppose it doesn’t necessarily have to be Spencer Matthews. But I can recommend it.

Yet fun as these are, the daydreams that really sustain you during those long, joyless slogs into work are the ones you have carefully nurtured, curated and refined over many years. So in my go-to fantasy, I end up playing football for Swedish amateur side Jönköpings Södra IF after getting a job as a history lecturer at the University of Jönköping (Jönköping is the only place in Sweden I’ve ever been to, so I’m working with what I know).

Under my leadership, the club rises through the divisions. I grow a beard (I cannot grow a beard in real life) and become good friends with The Cardigans, who regularly invite me to join them on stage. I move into a glass-and-timber modernist house overlooking a lake with my real-life girlfriend, who I have decided to allow into this fantasy. Eventually, Jönköpings Södra get into Europe and I score a last-second winner against Man U, whereafter AC Milan say they want to sign me but I hold a press conference stating that I’m instead going to write a series of fantasy novels about psychic Vikings which… oh… I’ve arrived at work.

I’ll let you know how my novels sell. But I’m not going to lie, I’m predicting big things.

Follow Ben on Twitter @ben_machell

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