Let the train take the strain (and multiply it)

I had a lovely break – thanks for asking.

Friends, family, pizza and industrial quantities of coffee. But oh, the trains...

Planning our jaunt down to the Shires, we concluded that sitting in a traffic jam on the M6 was undesirable. “Let’s take the train!” we thought. Watching the countryside zip by, relaxing, reading a book – what could be better? Arrive unruffled and de-stressed.

Our time away included the amusing delight of being told by my 6 year old niece I couldn’t be a fairy (or have wings) and had to be a troll instead – harsh but fair, I think you’ll agree.

We also took in both Ikea and John Lewis in one day – I became kitchenware blind after the first three hours, and kept mumbling “Ooo - that’s a good idea” at inappropriate moments. But it was great, and we have a new bath mat.

Before all that, we had the nightmare of a power failure between Lancaster and Preston. After two hours of travel, we’d only got as far as the former. Four hours in, we made it to the latter in Mrs G’s boss’s car – had that chance meet-up not occurred, we’d probably still be queuing for the bus replacement service, unless I was in prison for beating another traveller to death with a wodge of useless seat reservation tickets for my long-missed connections, because they were pushing in.

Over eight hours after leaving home we made it to Oxford, having endured the depressing reality of a new staff member in a coffee outlet at Reading. She was so slow, and clearly had only started the job as I arrived at the counter, we nearly missed another connection, and I wound up with a cup of warm milk with the vaguest suggestion of coffee flavouring, and precious little change from a tenner.

Then there was the all-pervading toilet whiff on board our tube of misery. We recently put a probe on a comet, but still don’t seem able to figure out how to prevent the breath of poo from every train loo.

And why are trains the only place you can find liquid soap with that uniquely special fragrance? How do they so successfully combine hints of plastic, cheap perfume and despair with the insipid pink colour that says “Meh” like no other moderately ineffective hand cleaning product can?

Assuming there is any. And the water works. And it doesn’t soak your sleeve whilst you wave your hands around trying to find the miniscule sweet spot of the sensor that triggers a 1 second dribble of tepid moisture.

Who can forget the teenage girl saying “like” in-between every other word, plus “It was sooooo funny!” at regular intervals. Not me – it like sooooo haunts my like dreams.

Don’t even mention the frantic dash across the Tube network coming back home, and the National Orchestra of Austria in our carriage...

I’ll take my chances on the Motorway next time. Or walk. It would still be quicker and more relaxing.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 21st of November 2014. The paper retitled the column as "Letting the train add to the strain", which is better than mine if I'm honest. Anyway, you can read the version they published on their website here

The picture accompanying this post is genuinely one of mine, taken whilst we were waiting for a train that never came at Lancaster. By that time, the somewhat random carriage letters seemed oddly appropriate.

If I had gone into more detail about the disaster that was our journey down to visit family and friends, this would only have been chapter one of a minimum of three volumes. It genuinely was that terrible. The return journey nearly wound up the same, but was saved only by a tube train with it's doors open as we rushed onto the platform.

I'm never going on a train again! Except the one to Edinburgh on Wednesday, obviously...

(This post typed to the tune of CD3 of Chris Rea's rather lovely "The Return Of The Fabulous Hofner Blue Notes".)

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