Sunny Side Down

It has been said, and you know who you are, that if a joke needs to be explained, its not funny. But I’ll do it anyway.

I have a light sensitivity. Nothing formally diagnosed, I just learned long ago that I don’t like bright lights. So if I were to be travelling, say, from Barnsley to Thurnscoe on the 226, as I often did at college, I knew to sit on the left hand side of the bus, because travelling east, that would put the bright glaring sun on the opposite side where it would bother me the least.

Thirty odd years later, on a bright sunny June evening, and I find myself at London Euston facing a two and a half hour train journey from South to North. I know better than to sit, if I can help it, on the left side of the train, where the sun is still high in the western sky.

But there’s this curious thing. Round about half way in to my journey, in the vicinity of Stafford, the sun glares in. Facing east, on a North Bound train, the sun gets in my face from the west. It should be impossible, but there it is.

There are a few curves here that put the train to the south west, literally going in the wrong direction. Its no wonder our trains are so slow, they might as well be going in circles. HS2 can’t come soon enough.

So that explains the sun, but where’s the joke? Well, although its customary in the UK to say up north, down south, up to Scotland, down to London, in railway parlance, the two running lines aren’t named by their cardinal directions, they are Up and Down. Up is always heading towards London, down is always heading away. So the Up Express would be the one going toward the capital.

Sunny Side Up refers to fried eggs that have not been flipped, I prefer mine Over Hard buts that’s by the by. On this Down Express, I avoided the sunny side, and I thought that would make for an amusing blog title. Am I wrong? I think not.