Through The Storm to The Smoke

After a breakfast of yoghurt and cheese, washed down with a glass of full-fat milk, we made our way to the railway station early. Storm Floris was interrupting myself, Mrs AWS’s, and our VVIP’s chaperoning trip from the Lake District to London.

The three of us needed seats on the 08:48, which was expected to be beyond overcrowded as only two storm-lashed trains originated north of Preston that day. We also wanted to reach the restaurant car early for our second breakfast, before it ran out of milk, cream, yoghurt, butter, and cheese.

Booked onto the cancelled 07:04 departure, I’d been hoping to observe the beasts returning to the fields from the milking parlour as we wound our way south. It was not to be. Still, I lived in hope that we might spot the milk tanker winding through the Cumbrian lanes, battling the tempest on its way to the pasteurising plant.

Hold on a minute. What? You mean the readers thought the title of last week’s article, The Dairy of a Chaperone, was a spelling mistake? Oh. Well. Hmm. More fool them. 😉

A great believer in those extinct species — printed timetables and folding maps — and not a fan of mobile phones and apps, I kept the new plan written in pen and ink within my Network Rail wallet:

Trust me, that’s all you need to know of the day. Those who understand, understand, and may turn the page. Those whose brains have been melted by new technology must read on.

Joking apart, we were at the station early. Our train sat in platform three, doors open, not many aboard. Beyond the magnificent canilevered roof of Citadel station, Floris huffed, tantrumed, and prepared to do her worst. But almost all the seats showed a little red light above them, meaning reserved. I left my VIP client in one of the few unreserved seats, watched over by Mrs AWS, while I made my way to unreserved coach C.

For the uninitiated, these types of trains — Avanti West Coast Pendolinos — come in two varieties: 9-coach and 11-coach. Perhaps to preserve the booking system while keeping the two types of sets interchangeable, there is one unreserved coach in the 9-car trains and three in the 11-car: C being unreserved in both, with G and U also unreserved in the 11s (I think).

This was a 9-car; therefore, only one unreserved coach. The number of available on-the-day seats was further reduced, as this carriage contains the shop/buffet. Three seats sat more or less together, so I rescued Mrs AWS and our VVIP, escorting them to coach C before heading to B and A in search of better luck.

And luck there was — but of a different variety, that of pleasurable coincidence. For who should be sitting in Coach B but an old friend of Going-Postal. Another character from the cast of my unread tall tales, long-suffering readers may recall Mrs Wong of the Wong Address Company. It was she who handled all the missing mail in the utopia that was Mr Lee’s 1980s Singapore in a G-P series called The Swaling.

A brief QT Review-style biography of Mrs Wong is available here. As ever with an iffy memoir, half of it is true, but the author is bound by the fantasist’s covenant not to say which half.

Another refugee from the 07:04 to Birmingham, we tapped our noses at each other and then fell into conversation. Of Honkers, not Singers, and born into Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution, she was the one smuggled across the border into Crown territory in the bottom of a sack of rice.

When both of us retired from our previous lives in exotic places, I got to know Mrs Wong while swapping tall travellers’ tales of derring-do over the counter of her Debatable Lands takeaway. Small world! In another astonishing coincidence, too fanciful not to be true, we were born on the same day.

However, she looks like a teenager and I look like a dead body. Tells you something about the comparative merits of growing up in the English provinces or Mao’s China.

In the golden age of air travel, a limited gene pool of regular flyers bonded amongst the clouds a mile above the Atlantic. Likewise with the 07:04 to Euston via Birmingham. You meet the same people on it over and over. Why so in times of the mass movement of people? Because the initiated realise it’s cheap, given it takes an extra hour to reach London compared to the more direct (not through Brum) Trent Valley route.

Back in coach C, I sat beside the aisle facing the direction of travel. Our VVIP sat on the other side of the aisle pointing the other way where I could keep an eye on her at all times. Mrs AWS sat behind me.

Alongside me was a stout man of the Black Country who should also have been on the 07:04 Avanti service because he was going to Wolverhampton. Tempted by TransPennine Express as far as Preston, they were going to charge him £30, so the 08:48 Avanti it had to be. The train filled. With no empty seats, latecomers stood or sat on their cases.

However, nearby and to the chagrin of the moral compass of a big chap from Wolverhampton, a rotter sat at a table seat with his bags and coat spread across the other three places. An only child? The chairman of a water company? I cannot judge.

The big fellow mentioned this to me, but I assured him I cannot judge. He took the matter into his own hands, stood, and instructed the gentleman to move his baggage. A lady, a gentleman, and a grateful youngster shuffled into the now-available seats.

An explanation was in order. ‘Many years ago, when I was on the move in Eastern Europe, the tickets were so cheap I would buy six at a time and stretch out in a compartment to myself. Barefoot pregnant girls, old ladies, their backs breaking under sacks of corn, and countrymen with a lamb under each aching arm, spent the night sleeping in the corridor. I cannot judge.’

Perhaps as mercenary as myself after all, my new best friend asked about refunds. I replied that, despite my aversion to new technology, I was in the Avanti refund club, with such things being sent to my bank upon the press of a button. While I was at it, and since it was his part of the world, I added that he should always book in advance and specify a direction of travel on any trip that includes Gloucester. There, the trains reverse.

Therefore, every trip involves a segment facing in the ‘wrong’ direction. In the days when the trade winds oft took me from the Scottish borders to the West Country, I enjoyed £5 back on every trip. At this point, regarding refunds and apps, I must relate to Puffins a salutary tale of Floris which appeared on the front page of our local paper a couple of days later.

A fellow Cumbrian, engaged in much the same journey as ourselves, gave up on the storm-induced lateness and chaos at Crewe, excused himself from the train, and decided to make his own way onwards. With a parsimony common amongst my fellow countymen, he used the app to get his refund whilst still on the platform.

That cancelled his e-ticket, and he couldn’t get through the station barriers. The staff, sour southerners from a meridional outpost called Cheshire, charged him £25 for the dubious privilege of being allowed to walk the streets of Crewe in a gale. A message there — don’t count on your refund before you’re back home!

To be continued…
 

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