Those Trains Again

Yesterday was a special event, an extremely belated birthday present for Daughter. She chose the Harold Pinter play ‘No Man’s Land’ starring the amazing Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. Her birthday was back in March but this play was worth waiting for. What's more, we had front row seats in the Royal Circle of the Wyndham Theatre - a real treat. There’s something magical about those small, highly decorated Edwardian London theatres and Pinter certainly gave us lots to think about afterwards. We continued to discuss the play throughout supper and during our return journey to St Pancras Station, but I’ll talk about our analysis of the play another day, with a ‘spoiler alert’ in case you’re about to go and see it. Today I have a need to discuss the journey. 

I don’t often travel by train although I have recently decided that I can no longer do long-distance driving and so am, unfortunately, going to have to increasingly rely on train travel. I say ‘unfortunately’ because, although I rarely use the train, in the last few years I’ve experienced long delays on three occasions due to someone committing suicide on the line. This happened last night. It created chaos at St Pancras. All trains were stopped and although they kept explaining the reason over the tannoy, it was cold, wet and late. I realise that somewhere, out there in the dark, a family’s life had just been devastated but I wanted to sit down, to get home. I was only thinking of myself.

The last time I experienced this kind of train delay I was travelling to visit Sister down South. I blogged about it in May of last year but the point needs to be reiterated. On that occasion I got talking to a member of staff who was escorting us on a detour back to London and she said that it happens at least two or three times a week. Two or three times a week. That is one of the saddest indictments of a civilised society that I can think of. Our way of life is sorely lacking if so many people want to kill themselves. Was it always this way? Or were people happier living in an extended family situation, with fewer material goods on offer, with less complicated job structures and less demanding work requirements? In which direction have we, as a society, let people down?

Once more, I shall clamber down off my orange box and get on with my day, but the experience has left a cold, 'no man's land' of a feeling inside me. Tomorrow I'll blog about Pinter and the play.

St Pancras Station is wearing its Christmas glitter but...

...there's good and not so good:

GOOD

Going to the smoke is easier than when I was a kid, except it’s not smoky anymore, not at London’s St Pancras International Shopping Concourse anyway. One hour and five minutes and I’m there, meeting up with Lovely Daughter.

NOT SO GOOD

Descending the escalators to the glittering mirror-ball world of shops at Christmas, I’m caught unawares by the policeman and police dog. “Keep walking! Don’t stop! Let the dog sniff you!” How could I help but have a moment’s falter in my step?

GOOD

OK, so everyone else was photographing the enormous Christmas tree made up of 2,000 Disney character teddies and it didn’t feel cool joining them but I did it anyway. I love teddies.

And because it was so difficult to get the full effect on camera, here's a close up of one tiny part of this huge, huge tree:

NOT SO GOOD

Lulled by the Christmas lights and festive shop displays we were jolted back to reality as two policemen walked past carrying machine guns, not just-in-case-holstered, but in their hands as if they might have to use them at any moment.

GOOD 

The opulent surroundings of Searcys Champagne Bar and Restaurant provided the perfect location for quality time with Daughter. We ate well, chatted loads and almost managed to put the entire world to rights. It was posh fish and chips for me followed by ice cream – delicious!

NOT SO GOOD

Meeting Daughter on a one-day return means that the time flashes past. We were soon hugging and waving our goodbyes and it was too quickly over...

GOOD

...but how great that we can do it. When I was a kid the steam train took hours of slow and dirty chugging. Don’t you just love today’s high-speed world... even if it does have its 'not so good' moments.

Train travel in our sad, bad world

This week I went to visit my sister in Lyme Regis. I took the train from Leicester to St Pancras, crossed London on the underground via the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square and then the Northern Line to Waterloo. The Axminster train was announced as soon as I arrived in Waterloo. At Axminster I knew there would be a lift waiting to take me to Lyme.

I settled onto the train. I had a table seat all to myself, lots of legroom, my newspaper spread out over the table. “This travelling lark is a doddle”, I thought. But 30 minutes into the journey the train stopped, never, it would seem, to move again.

We were told to leave the train. We were at a small, derelict station. We were taken under the tracks on a rubble strewn staircase that hadn’t been used for many a year. We were then told that we were being taken back to Waterloo. “But…” we all yelled and the staff patiently worked their way round all of us explaining over and over that there had been a suicide. Someone had thrown themselves in front of the train and so the entire line was now closed.

This brings me to the major issue of this blog post. The staff also said that this kind of thing is a regular occurrence. It has, in fact, affected me on a journey once before.

• Why do we live in such a sad, bad world?
• How can so many people throw themselves in front of trains?
• How can it be such a regular occurrence?
• We spend so much money and time trying to find cures for diseases, but when will we find a cure for this tragic social disease of sadness, alienation, desperation?
• Something, somewhere has gone very wrong with our society. How did this happen?

Back to the journey: We were herded onto a train at Waterloo and taken to Basingstoke. We were herded onto the platform at Basingstoke and told to wait for a train that said Axminster on the list of destinations, or as the information man barked, “Go outside and wait! It’s going to be very, very late!”

I arrived in Lyme three hours after I should have done. How could I complain when I knew that somewhere in the UK there was a family in total grief and turmoil? I had only missed an afternoon with my sister. I’ll blog about the actual visit to Lyme Regis another time. I just needed to get this off my chest first.

A Writing Exercise and Some Thoughts on Travel

Yesterday we had our second East Midlands Lapidus Therapeutic Writing Day. We seem to have hit on a winning formula here because the day was every bit as enjoyable, stimulating and worthwhile as was the first one.

I thought I’d share with you a little bit about one of the writing exercises that we did. It is something that anyone can try and is amazingly powerful, but to get the most out of it you’d need to grab a pencil and paper now, read the following instructions, do about 15 minutes of rapid writing and then return to my blog to read how I got on. If you linger to think about it then the spontaneity will be lost.

I shall pause now while you get yourself equipped.

Ok, the task is to write a letter (unsent) to thank someone from your past, someone who has had a significant effect on you, who has influenced you and maybe your life.

A second pause while you go and do it.

We didn’t discuss this exercise in any way before we started and yet we all chose a strong-minded woman to ‘receive’ our letters. I chose my Great Aunt who I’ve talked about here before so I won’t go into the details. I will, however, say that as an outcome of that writing exercise I was able to see how much more satisfied that generation were with ‘their lot’ than we are today. Is it because they had to fight to survive? In my Great Aunt’s case it was not only near starvation and subsequent immigration from Latvia in the early 20^th century but also evacuation during the 2^nd World War leaving the security of a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking environment for the life of a foreigner in Leicester, yet she never appeared to be dissatisfied. I feel truly humbled at that realisation.

Finally a note about the ups and downs of travelling: The session yesterday was in Melton Mowbray which is only about 17 miles from home but I made the decision to take the train rather than drive. (If I had a pound for every wrong decision I’ve made in my life I’d be rich indeed.) 

The bus journey from my house to the train station took twice as long as the train journey from Leicester station to Melton Mowbray. (The journey to the train station normally takes about 5 minutes.) It was an extremely frustrating journey. 

Having said that, travelling by train has advantages over driving. You meet interesting people, are able to watch the world in a voyeuristic way and arrive without shoulders glued to ears! (My usual position after driving unfamiliar routes – yes I know! That’s so ‘girlie’!)

Did you do the writing exercise? 

How did it go? 

Have you any such writing exercises you could share?

Lunch at Hedges Towers

"What do you mean you KNOW her?" my friend said. "You've never met her. How can she be a friend? What will you talk about?"

The friend who said these words has never been on Twitter, never blogged and doesn't understand how real friendships can grow via our computer screens...

...and, yes, you've possibly guessed the rest. I met up with Carol Hedges today and we talked non-stop for three hours. [We only had three hours as I was taking advantage of the cheap off-peak train fares. Train travel at normal rates is prohibitively expensive... even to meet a very good friend!] 

Visitors to Carol's highly entertaining blog will instantly recognise the car in this picture!

What's more, I've been inside it and here's the proof!

There's a beautifully laid out allotment just visible through the windscreen. We wandered over there and found a kind friend to take a photo of the two of us.

But we were still chatting even as the shutter clicked. 

We discovered lots of things we didn't know about each other, like the fact that I'm older than Carol... but only by one month! We talked about blogging, tweeting, writing and lots more besides. I had a lovely time and I'm sorry there aren't more photos. It's just that we were talking so much...

The Last Bank Holiday

In the UK we've just had our last Bank Holiday until 25th December.

The rain fell...

The wind blew...

The sun hardly showed itself...

But we had fun out and about, visiting family and doing real Bank Holiday type activities, like taking our grandchildren for their first steam train ride:

Today the local children went back to school. I watched them going down the road wearing new school uniforms with sharp creases in their trousers, perfectly tied ties and plenty of room to 'grow into them'. It reminded me of when I used to send my kids off to school. I even shed a few tears. How soppy is that? 

So the holidays are truly over and, like I said, the next one in the UK won't be for four months [Message to Government: Can we have a few more please?] but in the meantime I have a camera full of photographs and a whole load of memories of a lovely time and that's very precious.

What's your favourite way to spend a Bank Holiday?

Was this the last train out of London?

It was going to be a bit of an outing… well not much of one to be honest, but two days of tests for Rod at the National Amyloidosis Centre, at London's Royal Free Hospital was as good as it gets these days. It was the first time Rod had been out since his stem cell transplant four months ago and so, if nothing else, we were planning to include a bit of window shopping in the new, shiny St Pancras Train Station on the way home. 

Fortunately the consultation at the end of Rod’s two-day test marathon was good. He is progressing as well as can be expected. The statistics show that the stem cells have just about done what they were meant to do. All we need now is for him to get stronger and put on a bit of weight which will, the consultant assured us, happen all in good time. 

There were light flurries of snow as we shivered our way from the hospital but at St Pancras 'cancelled' signs screamed at us from the departure boards. This was no time for window shopping. We joined the mass of panicky travellers and wedged ourselves onto what, according to the information displayed, was the only train heading to the East Midlands. It was going to Sheffield to be precise, with Leicester as its first stop. 

The journey was beautiful, white fields lit by dazzling sunshine, but by the time we reached Leicester it was snowing and as we alighted from the train we heard the announcer breaking the news to the remaining travellers. The train was no longer going to Sheffield but would terminate at Derby. We’re home now, heating on full blast, cuddling hot mugs of tea, but I keep wondering what happened to all those people who thought they were on their way to Sheffield.

  

Seven trains for seven story-starters

I had an adventure this week. I made an impulse journey to Manchester to cuddle my newborn grandson, my proud son and my exhausted daughter-in-law. I’ve never been on seven trains in one day before. It should have been six. One was a mistake but they provided lots of material for my writer’s notebook.

Train No. 1 – Leicester to Sheffield

Opposite me a suited business man tapped out a report on his laptop while his headphones fed a gentle suss suss into his ears. He was unaware of the drama unfolding in the seat behind me, of an anxious voice on his mobile,

‘We have to close the deal today.’ ...pause... ‘Because I’m leaving the country tomorrow.’ ...pause... ‘You’ll have the money by 5 pm, right!’ I didn’t see his face but he was fast becoming a character in my mind.

Train No. 2 – Sheffield to Manchester

I was on the Trans-Pennine express, not as romantic as it sounds. There were no seats, hardly a spare piece of floor. A man took pity, stood up for me and I fought my pride and accepted. We travelled side by side, him hanging from the overhead rail, me squashed between people and suitcases. He looked as if he’d missed a night’s sleep, eyelids drooping, hangdog jowls. Shame he hadn’t got a seat! As we approached the station he tapped out a text, one-handedly. The reply was swift. His face was no longer hangdog. He pushed his way to the doors and was the first to leave the train.

Train No. 3 – Metrolink Tram to Eccles

I hadn’t seen the centre of Manchester since 1968. It’s changed. The tram provides an excellent vantage point for sight-seeing/nosying. We passed Salford Quays, a square of water surrounded by newly developed flats. The place was deserted except for a man sitting on a bench, his legs outstretched, his head hanging down. The tram veered to the right and he was gone but for a moment longer his despair travelled on in my mind.

[At this point the above photograph should be inserted but Blogger won’t let me move it down.]

Train No. 4 – Metrolink Tram to Altrincham

Yes, I know that I shouldn’t have been on this tram but it didn’t take me too far out of my way and it provided a colourful character for my notebook. He was with his mates. He spoke with a gentle rap rhythm, shoulders undulating, hands gesticulating. The closer we got to the City the more animated he became.

‘We is gonna have, right, one hell of a night, right!’ At Market Street I left them to it. I only hope it was a good night he had rather than a hell of a one.

Train No. 5 – Metrolink Tram to Piccadilly Station

A short trip. I stared through the window until we entered a tunnel beneath the station and a row of faces reflected back at me. My own was tired. I glanced away to the face behind, a young girl, long black curls, red lipstick and a tear rolling down her cheek.

Train No. 6 – Manchester to Sheffield

The train had come from Manchester airport and once again was packed before I even got onto it. I squeezed in beside a young boy and his dad.

‘We’ve had a great adventure, haven’t we?’ said dad. The boy nodded, a plastic aeroplane in each hand. I didn’t mind as aeroplanes dived-bombed across my bags. I’d had a great adventure too.

Train No. 7 – Sheffield to Leicester

At Chesterfield an elderly mother waved as her son got onto the train. She walked back along the platform alone, trying to hide her tears. It’s hard to say ‘goodbye’ to your son and then go back to your own life while he gets on with his, even though that’s why you brought them into the world in the first place. I took another tissue from my handbag.