A beginners guide to train travel

Your seat reservation is only valid on the train you are booked on.
For example, if you have booked to travel on the 7am train, you are not entitled to that same seat on the 8am train. Equally if you get on the train a day late, "your" seat is likely to be taken by someone else.

This may seem obvious, but it clearly isn't to everyone as for the second time in a row, on my journey north someone told me categorically without any trace of doubt that I was in their seat, only for it to turn out that they should have travelled on a train on a different day or time.

The View from the no. 42*

Weeks of my life have been consumed with buses. When I wasn't on a bus, I was waiting for a bus, running for a bus or changing buses.

The journey to work was generally fine, although my main bus seems prone to breakdowns - in the space of a week, I was on a bus that broke down, then I was the bus following a bus that broke down that had to pick up the stray passengers.

The bus journey can be rather pleasant on a morning. Apparently it takes you right past Tommy Steele's house, except I'm not entirely sure which one it is. There are some beautiful properties along the route, although their appeal is somewhat marred when you think about how many people must gawp into their gardens each day from the top deck of the bus.

The return journey however is a more stressful affair as no bus seems to travel without a handful of teenagers discussing how much alcohol they've recently drank. The young people of my new worktown are an interesting breed - the girls are like a race of superbeings, none of them over a size 6 or under 5ft10, all with waist-length toussled hair. None of the adults look like this so presumably they all either leave the town at 20 or decline dramatically (perhaps as a result of all that vodka drinking).

Anyway I was tired of the traffic and teenagers, so I've made a change to avoid the bus. I've not moved house or quit the job (although both thoughts have occurred to me). No, I've taken the rather less radical step of being a travelcard that allows me to take the train home (or more accurately two trains and a bus, as opposed to the two buses). My quality of life has improved although I'm sticking with the morning buses.


*the number of the bus has been changed to protect the innocent

Changes

Whereas before I took a train then a tube to work, now I take the bus. Two buses in fact.

This is just one of the changes involved in the change of jobs.

Where I was in the arts before, I'm now in the Voluntary & Community Sector.
Where I worked in central London before, I'm now on the outskirts
Where my job had a UK-wide remit before, I'm now working at a local level in one borough
Where I worked 10 to 6, I now work 9 to 5

Its a lot of change. I'm still exhausted by it all. I'm still not sure what to make of it.

On the plus side, I have a new health club and whilst I am missing my outdoor swimming, this place is clean and quiet.

The system

Why does travelling by the London transport system always feel like such a battle? Surely a transport system is supposed to ease your passage through the city, making things easier. But not in London. Every day it feels like the system has to be outwitted, and it becomes a battle of wills, you versus the system. You feel a sense of achievement if you manage to get somewhere without too much of a problem. But if you beat the system on your outbound journey, it will punish you on your return.

And this is when "a good service is operating on all London underground lines". And for this they want a payrise, they feel they deserve more than the £50K most tube drivers earn?

I managed to navigate my way to and from work yesterday, only adding three hours onto my day. Today, I fear the system will take its revenge.

Bus Load

Psychology is a subject I find fascinating, but I'm not sure about the merits of a piece of research from Salford University that was reported in the paper yesterday. A professor has spent time and presumably money researching what your favourite seat on the bus reveals about your personality.

Top Deck of the Bus:
Back: Rebellious
Middle: Independent Minded, more likely to read a newspaper or listen to music
Front: Forward Thinking

Downstairs:
Back: Risk-takers who like sitting on the raised aera because it makes them feel important
Middle: Strong Communicators
Front: Sociable meeters-and-greeters

People who don't have a preference are categorised as "Chameleons" and they feel they can fit in anywhere.

This brings to mind a couple of questions.
1. Where do you prefer to sit? I'm a forward-thinking front of the top deck person
2. What about on single deck buses or the controversial bendy buses?
3. What is the point of this research?

Riding the Tube with Bobby G

People who don’t live in London often ask me if I see lots of celebrities around London, and I really don’t tend to. This may be because a) my eyesight isn’t very good, and b) I often struggle to recognise people outside of context in which I know them (for example I once walked past my own mother on the high street, obviously I didn’t recognise her outside of the confine of our house). It also might be down to the fact that I don’t really frequent the sort of places that the rich frequent.

But this morning, I saw Bobby Gillespie on the tube! Actually, the OH saw Bobby Gillespie and I initially doubted him. Unlike me he is often mistaking people for celebrities like the time he was convinced football managers Gerard Houllier and Sven Goran Eriksson were having a pint together in our local – they weren’t. But it turned out he was right. And he (Bobby G that is, not the OH) was getting off at the same stop as me! Fancy that.

I realise that Bobby Gillespie is hardly A list celebrity, but in my world, he is, having been in two of my all time favourite bands and I have described him as my ideal man on several occasions. So it was nice to start the day seeing him in the flesh - he looked ghostly white, knackered and was wearing dubious pointy shoes, but I still would have done it with him there on the concourse if he'd asked.

But I must admit I was surprised to see him on a crowded tube train at 8.30 in the morning. Surely he can afford a cab? According to some tabloid or other (as the OH informed me later) he was out partying with Kate Moss last (Bobby G again, not the OH) and was spotted leaving her place at 5am.

That still leaves quite a few hours unaccounted for though, unless he really struggled to work the ticket machine.

First Transport Rant of 2008

My anger this time is at National Express who have recently taken over the East Coast Mainline that was previously being run by GNER We’ve had our ups and downs over the years, me and GNER but I think I’m going to miss them, based on my first experience of the new regime.

For my return journey, I had booked a seat in First Class. Not that I’m usually this flash but the ticket was only £10 more than standard and past experiences with a large suitcase and the Christmas crowds made me think it was the way to minimise the stress of the journey. The train was 15 minutes late and when it arrived it was already full, every seat and spare inch of floor space was taken up with luggage and people standing. My seat that I naively thought was reserved had someone else in it who’d travelled from Scotland and also had a reservation for it.

So I spoke to a train guard, who said ‘All of the seats have been double-booked as its Christmas’

‘But I’ve paid for First Class’ I countered

To which he said parrot fashion ‘You haven’t paid for the seat reservation. We give you that free so it doesn’t guarantee you a seat’.

“But why would I pay extra for First Class if it didn’t get me a seat. Its not better standing in First Class than standing in Standard’, said I.

To which he had no reasonable answer, but instead said that the next train would be starting from this station so there might be more room on there and he signed my ticket to allow me to travel on the later train.

As I was getting off, another National Express employee told me there was no point getting off as the next train would be the same. I explained to her that there wasn’t even room to stand on the one I’d got off, so I didn’t have much choice. She said the next one would be as bad. Then we had the same conversation about seats not being guaranteed.

Our conversation was overheard by a couple of Americans who told me they thought it was a disgrace what these companies were allowed to get away with. Thankfully I got on the next train (which wasn’t anywhere near as busy but was delayed) but I will be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint to National Express.

Public Transport Moans

I’m limiting myself to three for today.

Move Down Inside the Carriage
This announcement is frequently heard on rush hour tubes and in the main, the passengers obey. But without this reminder on other forms of transport, left to their own device, the public will cluster around the entrance way. I’ve witnessed several buses go past stops of people because the lower deck by the driver is full but the whole upstairs is empty. And its not just old folk who can’t manage the stairs either. Then this morning, people were left on the platform because they couldn’t’ get on the train but the aisles and even a few seats were empty, but the entrance way was blocked. Which brings me onto my next moan…

Two tickets please - one for me and one for my bag
Its rush hour, people are standing in the aisles if they’ve even managed to get on the train at all, but there are always people who are taking up a seat with their belongings. And the worst offenders are white upper middle class women who tut, glare and generally put up quite some resistance to letting fellow passengers sit down. On the tube or bus with bulky luggage, it is possibly understandable, but on a train with an overhead luggage rack, is there any real excuse? Unless of course, they are buying a separate ticket for their bag, in which case it is entitled to a seat.

A Good Service is Operating
My tube journey on a certain route to work should take 30 minutes, so how come for the last two weeks, every time I’ve gone that way, it has taken 50 minutes. And still they claim this is a good service. The times when they admit that they are problems on the line, is when it takes 90 minutes. But apparently they are meeting their targets of reliability. Perhaps I’m just very unlucky and manage to pick the two tubes running with problems each day and the other hundred or so run exactly on time?

How was your journey?

I’ve just returned from an all too brief trip to my family in the north. As ever upon arriving, everyone asks me how my journey was or if I had a good journey. I realise this is a rhetorical question. I’m there, nobody really wants to know the station by station account of how I got there. But this time, I didn’t just nod and say fine. This time I told people about my journey and I’m fairly sure no one will ask again.

I made it to the train with only about a minute to spare, took my seat and started reading my book. After about 20 minutes we arrived at Stevenage, where the train stood for about 15 minutes. Then came the announcement. ‘This is an emergency. Please could all passengers get off the train as quickly as possible and head towards the north end of the platform’.

Everyone assumed it was a bomb scare (‘you would in the present climate, won’t you’ said everyone I told). People made for the exits. The woman next to me looked close to tears. I eventually got off (there was no chivalry about letting women and children off first). But then I overheard some staff saying it was a small fire in buffet carriage. A team of firemen arrived (what is the collective noun for firemen? A brigade?) and put out the fire while we all stood on the freezing platform.

Another announcement to tell us what was happening as many people still thought it may have been a terrorist threat and the news that they needed to call an engineer before anyone could get back on the train. Then another announcement to say that they had arranged for the train just leaving London to make an additional stop to pick us all up. So a full trains worth of people had to cram onto an already busy train. It was chaos and due to the time spent on the platform I never warmed back up.

So that was how my journey was.

The Day of Reckoning

One day, I will snap. One day, enough will be enough and I will fight back. I don't think that day is too far away.

What am I talking about? People playing their music loudly through their phones on the bus, that's what.

Last night for example. There I was listening to my ipod at a normal level so nobody but myself could hear it, but once on the bus I had to turn it right up to drown out the sound of some tinny shitty r'n'b being played at volume through some inconsiderate moron's phone. I was listening to 'Everybody Here Wants You' by Jeff Buckley, a song of sublime beauty, of swooning melodies, of lyrical subtlety. And it was competiting in my earlobe with some distorted clanging grunting noise that I suppose was ostensibly about the same thing, except in that one the singer showed his appreciation for the 'hotness' of the woman by wanting to take her roughly right now. Simply enchanting.

In my fantasy, I will stand up and tell them in no uncertain terms to turn it down, they'll snarl and be abusive of course, but then everyone else on the bus will applaud me and we'll all unite against the noise polluters. Or in an alternative version, I'll travel London with a sack of cheap earphones, dispensing them to the offenders like some sort of music police Santa Claus and I'll become legendary.

Of course, in reality none of those things will happen. If I do say something, I'll probably get stabbed and my fellow passengers will ignore it, or (more likely still) I'll continue to suffer it in silence.

Double-Speak

The only seat free on the bus this morning was in front of a man and woman talking at an intrusive volume. At first I was annoyed that I couldn’t concentrate on reading my book with their incessant talking behind me but then I abandoned my reading and decided their conversation was more interesting anyway.

It was immediately obvious that this pair were not friends, family or lovers but work colleagues and their whole conversation revolved around someone called Trevor who was causing them both a problem. But this was a work conversation, so their dislike for Trevor was shrouded in business speak, each of them using carefully selected phrases that whilst getting their message across, could not be used against them at a later date should the other one turn. People do not speak like this in real life, only at work, but what struck me as odd about this conversation was that it was taking place on a bus in the suburbs. These sorts of conversations don’t seem so strange on a train but it seemed so wrong on a double-decker bus.

It was not evident what Trevor had done, but apparently he was in a better position than our pair as he had a powerful ally in (the Dickensian named) Gerry Mudd. Gerry Mudd was taking Trevor’s side and this was a problem. The man of our pair understood this to be a problem, but a solution was not so simple.

“We need a representative on earth” he said. Were they some sort of gods? I’m picturing a council of immortals like in ‘Clash of the Titans’. He continued ‘Of course we did have Drysdale in there, but then he went native’. Went native! A term I’ve only heard used when talking about undercover police work! Who speaks like this?

There was some mention of a railway. I was disappointed when the bus journey ended as I was intrigued by what field this pair were in – railway espionage it sounded like. (I think they might have worked for a local authority in reality)

I think I talk too plainly to ever succeed in these sorts of fields. On a related note, tomorrow I’m going to Lichfield. I’ve nothing against Lichfield. I know absolutely nothing about it. Except it sounds like the sort of place people like the bus pair would go on business. If I say outloud the phrase ‘I’m in Lichfield tomorrow’ I sound like one of them.

The Suburbian Railway - Some Observations

I’ve been taking the train into work for about a month now. It is very different from my previous journey into work by tube.

• The train arrives a few minutes late most days, especially if I’ve panicked and hurried there
• The train is shorter than the platform but there is no telling where it will stop as it changes daily
• Everyone moves along the platform once the train arrives even if they were already level with a door
• The ‘No Smoking’ rule doesn’t seem to apply on the platform yet it applies on the outdoor tube station platforms, which are essentially the same
• The polyester suit is the outfit of choice on the suburban rail line
• You see the same people every day. Some of the ‘characters’ on my journey include the girl with the severe platinum blonde hair of looking like my ex-best friend, the scruffy man with the greying ponytail, the man in shorts, the art student with her portfolio. I wonder if anyone has noticed me and realised that I’m new?

What a morning

I set off 40 minutes early to allow myself plenty of time to go to the bank to transfer the deposit before work. I thought it was plenty of time, but yet again London Transport intervened. The Central Line packed up en route - annoyingly with our train stood just outside of a station for twenty minutes and the station that the problem became apparent at is one in the middle of nowhere so no use for changing. Eventually, we moved one more stop down the line and everyone was advised to get off and make other arrangements. I managed to get onto a bus to Piccadilly Circus - there were still hoardes left on the pavement.

Once on the bus, it was a rather pleasant journey. The sun was out and I enjoyed looking out of the window as it went through Notting Hill and Bayswater, then down Oxford Street. Plenty of things to look at - beautiful houses, parks and then the shops. If I hadn't been in a rush it would have been a lovely start to the day and much preferable to being stuck underground.

I managed to get to the bank eventually where I was asked a series of riddle like questions in order to prove it was my bank account which to be honest I struggled with, having no idea what my overdraft limit is as I've never asked for one, nor my credit card limit which I'm sure is something outlandish that I have no intention of using. Eventually she seemed satisfied that I was me and the deposit has been sent. The OH meanwhile was entrusted to arrange the buildings insurance which he has done without any hassles, so we have now completed 29% of the Moving list.

Riding the Silverlink with Dominic West

On the way home yesterday, I foumd myself to be sat opposite the actor Dominic West on the Silverlink train. Now, Dominic West is hardly a household name, but he is one of the stars of my all time favourite programme 'TheWire' (which hasn't received the attention it deserves over here).

I was sat next to his daughter who was reading aloud. I then realised that actually she wasn't just reading, they were going over a script, with her testing him on his lines. It was at this point that I looked up at the man she was with and I thought 'is that him?'. I was never quite certain it was him as I have a very poor record of not recognising/mistaking people, but I did think he was in London doing theatre recently and having looked it up I now know he going to be in Rock n Roll soon, which fits with the script he was reading (he still needs to do a bit of work on it!)

The OH was very annoyed with me for not talking to him. But I really wasn't 100% certain it was him and I never know what to say to 'famous' people. The other thing is that at my work it is a huge faux pas to come over all fan like in the prescence of actors. Tonight is my work Awards ceremony where any such behaviour is pretty much a sacking offence. I wonder if he will be there? If he is, I will have an opening of 'We were on the same train yesterday'.