I am outraged. I haven’t been this incensed since I learned that cigarette vending machines in pubs didn’t vend packs of twenty, but 16 in a twenty pack. Outrageous. And that was over thirty years ago.

Any way. It turns out that buffet car wine doesn’t come in 25cl bottles like you might reasonably expect, it’s 187ml. each miniature bottle is 1/4 of a proper bottle, not 1/3. It’s not even a glass of wine, they might as well sell it in a can.

But they are included in the meal deal. So there is that.

The Train Line App wouldn’t sell me a ticket for my usual train and indicated that the first two off peak services were cancelled. This was an issue for me because I’m an hour and a half late for work on the best of days, but there was nothing I could do.

Instead, I bought a ticket for the 07:58 from Lancaster, with a change at Crewe for a faster service in to London. Not ideal, but would avoid an extra hour of lateness.

It also meant that I had time for a Gregs Bacon bun with dob of brown sauce.

It was a fine morning to sit in the shade, munching bacon, and watching trains. A class 88 passed through at half past seven, heading north on the mainline, running light. Then five minutes later, at 07:35, the allegedly cancelled 07:41, the one I should have been on, whizzed through Carnforth, on time. It was a nine carriages train again, too short for comfort, so I avoided that misery again at least.

I arrived at Lancaster at 07:53. On the Airport train, a class 195, bright clean and airy. Well loaded but comfortable. Plenty of time to catch the 07:58 for Euston, when it arrives at 08:33.

While waiting, I take a moment to check the morning sevices. None of the trains I wanted to catch this morning that showed as cancelled on Trainline, were actually cancelled. Slightly miffed about that.

The platform tanoy announces that the next direct train to Euston will be the 08:41, expected at 08:44, and only nine carriages again. I have to chose between the 08:41, due Euston 11:12, or the earlier 07:58, due 08:34, estimated for Euston at 11:55. The plan was to change from the slow train at Crewe for a faster one, but the 08:41 is fastest, and I had already missed the faster connections at Crewe, so there is no point. I decided to suffer the faster shorter train.

08:31, the platform PIS announces the slow train is running so late that it will skip the West Midlands and run direct to London. I take a moment to quietly express my gratitude and make my way to the correct part of the platform to board one of the unreserved carriages.

I gradually become aware of a large group of primary age school children forming around me, they are going to London too. I reckon about fifty of them. This was going to be a loud journey.

I left Lancaster at 08:41, but not on the 08:41, on the 07:58. The one that goes through the midlands, except that its not going through the midlands, so unless we are over taken by the 08:41, we should get to Euston first.

The train seams pleasantly loaded, the hoard of school children having boarded a different carriage, sparing my peace, but I am only too aware that anyone could get on at the next stop. This gives me the idea for a short story, The Later Train.

The Later Train.

Lone traveller is seated by the window enjoying the journey home when the train is joined by a group of three drunk but good tempered Glaswegians from 1973. They some how missed their own train and found themselves in 2026. Hilarity ensues.

After leaving Preston, no sooner than I had formulated that idea, we are forewarned by the Train Manager that a large group of children will be joining at Warrington, their train was cancelled, and they will seated in Coach G. I am in coach G. I am reminded of the time when the wires were down and we had to travel up to Leeds from Kings Cross. Thankfully, they cannot reserve seats that are already occupied on Avanti, unlike LNER. Ugh.

We crawled through Rugby at 10:36, and made an unscheduled stop at one of the platforms. I could see from the App that the 08:41 was just minutes behind us, and wondered if we had stopped for it to over take us. And then it over took us.

I don’t have tracking for my own train by this point because we are off route, but I was using the tracking for the train behind us to judge our progress, but now we are behind it, its harder to say.

The children are well behaved, but they are very loud. Singing, clapping, shouting.

We passed one of the Lumos at Milton Keynes, and shortly after that, the kids noticed that they are on a tilting train. “Why did it tip just then?”, “why does it look like we’re flying?” How could they be taking the train to London and the teachers not even mention the technological marvel that allows us to travel faster on a curvey bendy route such as this. The state of education these days…

And is it just me, or does the automated voice say “Novanti Trains” instead of “Avanti Trains”?

The Way Back Home is Always Long…

Like the day before, I checked the times and the length of the trains for the journey home. The half four was a nine carriages train, too short, but the half five had no consist information yet, so I decided to chance it and said yes to a couple of beers.

Halfway through my second beer I checked the train app and saw that the half five was cancelled. That will explain why there was no consist info. There was no consist. A consist being the composition of railway vehicles that combine to form a train.

No problem, have a couple more beers.

Its very hot in London at the moment, its warmer than the Canaries, the place we like to go for hot weather.

Not being sure of where I was exactly, I left the pub, the name of which I have already forgotten and headed for Euston. I must have got turned around somehow because I noticed that things didn’t look familiar, but did not look unfamiliar. I thought I was on Gower Street, heading towards Euston, but was actually on Tavistock Place, heading the wrong way, and my feet hurt. Lucky I need the exercise.

Arrived at Euston, at about 18:00 and went straight to the Cornish Pasty stall. I had walked passed the stall so many times and regretted not buying anything once on board the train and everyone opens up their hot food. So I bought a steak and ale pasty. Seven quid odd. Fuck off! For a pasty? It is what it is I suppose, but seven quid, fuck right off. Pardon my French.

Boarded the 18:30 at about ten past six at coach G, walked right through it. No air conditioning. It was like an oven. Found a seat instead in Coach U. And then ate my seven quid fuck off steak and ale pasty.

There was a bing bong noise. The Train Manager had an announcement. Do Not Sit in Coaches G or C, they are over heating! And because the shop is located in Coach C, there would be no shop on board this service. And thus, the theme of this Journey’s disruption was established.

It could have been worse. I could have been on the Tring train.

In fairness to Avanti, the train left on time, and only lost half an hour by the time we reached Lancaster, and that was due to scallies. And the Half Six on a Tuesday is clearly the time to travel. Even with the cancelled half five, and the unusable coaches G and C, and also D, as it was later announced, there were still spare seats. And free chilled water being handed out throughout the journey. So I can’t complain.

And how can I complain with the English scenery, the intermittent air conditioning, and the free water.

All was going well until we were approaching Warrington and we hit a red light. Trespassers were reported on the line, and they had left debris on the line that had to be cleared before any trains could proceed. Can’t everything I suppose.

But I did a pic of a 769 at Wigan.

These long days of travel disruption could have been avoided if I’d simply taken a hotel outside of central London. Wimbledon has had a ripple effect that means all of my cosy two star Bloomsbury hotels are now the same price I would expext to pay at The Plaza, but there were alternatives, but then I’d miss out on all of this.

Alls well that ends well, thats what I say.

We took a road trip to Yorkshire at the weekend to take the kids to see my parents, their grand parents.

The thing to do at the start of any day, not just road trips is to get a proper breakfast, and we are blessed to have in our vicinity a truck stop that does proper breakfast for decent breakfast money.

A good strong cup of tea to wash down a plateful of sausage and bacon and black pudding, and hashbrowns, and mushrooms, and tomatoes (properly cooked, not half a grilled tomato like served at lesser places), plus toast and some proper butter.

And brown sauce. Can’t forget the brown sauce.

After breakfast, we returned to the car and I gave it a quick inspection before we headed toward the motorway.

I was immediately reminded of that meme that was doing the rounds a while ago. The one with the car in the nineties covered in dead insects, contrasted with current day, the clean car. It serves to illustrate the loss of wildlife along our road sides.

I have mentioned it before, but I recall seeing high speed trains arriving at Doncaster station, their yellow frontage blackened with the dead flies collected along its way. Occasionally, there would be dead bird stuffed in to one of the exhaust grills too.

Its true. We don’t see this as much, but its not completely barren out there. I have noticed trains arriving with a coating of flies covering their frontage, though not as heavily as those long lost childhood summers.

As for my own car, I felt it deserved a photo.

It was probably AI, but the point holds true.

I saw a video on Facebook the other day. An older lady explaining how these are your Golden Years.

“You still have your health, loved ones are still around, the dog still lay at your feet”.

I’m seeing a lot of AI recreations of the past at the moment, in the various social media feeds. They usually have a tag line Christmas 1995, or 1967 or something. And what these videos aim to capture is the mundane everyday awesomeness of the past.

We’d all love to go back twenty years, thirty years, forty years, to revisit just one absolutely ordinary day. See our parents again, full of life, our siblings, our forever friends before they drifted on toward pastures greener. To see the dog and hear him bark at the neighbour. To hear the old phone ring, the gate at the bottom of the garden creak open and slam shut.

The point that we keep missing though, is that this is our twenty year ago now, right now, this ordinary moment is one that we will in future years look back on with longing.

And worse than that, our memories of today will be recalled as “nothing happened” because of the time consumed by social media. None of us will lay on death beds lamenting how little time we spent on twitter. This is a warning, a call to sanity.

Wheel Flats

It occurred to me the other day that we don’t hear wheel flats anymore.

Wheel flats are a train thing. When there is uneven wear on the steal wheel, they hit the track like a hammer with every rotation. Wheel flats causes track damage and has led to some horrific rail disasters in the past. So they are monitored, and fixed.

I spend a lot of time on the railways, travelling here and there, and it occurred to me that this sound is absent.

The thought of it took me back down the through the decades, back to when I would stand at the station, watching the slow coal train chug past. The stench of diesel fresh in the air and its thick black exhaust following the sound of the engine receding in to the distance, but there was still the squeak and clatter and squeel of the 36 coal hoppers slowly following the locomotive up the gentle incline. Standing out from the typical sounds was that low thud of the wheel flat. You would hear it coming, you would hear it pass, and you would hear it miles in to the distance, its frequency increasing with the speed of the train, long after the flashing red tail light had vanished in to the dim evening haze.

And then you’d go home. And tea would be made for your by your mother, a plate of chips, deep fried in lard of course, home cut, served maybe with sausages, the type that were thirty percent gristle, but it didn’t matter. Lashings and lashings of salt and vinegar more than made up for it. The best thing in the world. The most ordinary thing in the world, now marooned, out of reach, in the Golden Years.

A Lovely Evening

Beer o’clock came in after midnight, and I could have been really grumpy about it, but I wasn’t, though I was getting a little stressed at times.

It was supposed to be an evening of me and the lass going to see the Spooky Men’s Choir, but the youngest son’s return date/time was announced after we booked tickets, so the oldest went in my place.

The show was expected to end at about nine pm, though I have no idea where that time was plucked from, while the youngest was due back from France at half eight.

Any way. It was going to be tight, but I was optimistic about the plan to drop them off at seven in Kendal for the show, drive to Kirby Lonsdale, watch YouTube in the car while waiting for up to about an hour, no biggy, and then return to pick up at the Taxi Rank in Kendal.

After dropping off my first born and his mom, I then got the message that the coach was delayed until ten pm, so I went home and ate half a roast chicken, dipped in hot sauce. I have an undocumented Hot Sauce problem, but thats another story.

So it was then back to Kendal for nine pm. The show was still going after 21:40, and messages were unhelpful, so I had no choice but to back to the school, 30 minutes away, where I got the message that it would now be eleven. I also saw that the show had ended and they were ready to be collected. So I had to weigh up if I now had time to get back to Kendal with time to return to the school.

I decided that it wouldn’t hurt if the wife and boy waited in the pub for an hour or so.

By now it was proper dark, and chucking it down. I took a photo from the carpark. Lots of cars. In the dark. Engines running. Headlights on.

Checking the maps I saw that the M6 was shut near Lancaster,  it is often shut near Lancaster, so I asked my youngest son to send a screen shot of his map.

I would have had time to return to kendal after all, if I’d know sooner. He finally arrived at 23.15 with stories of high adventure in a French chateau, bomb site, chocolate factory, market, beach, etc, and we went to pick up the rest of us at the taxi rank in Kendal, after being kicked out of the pub in to the rain with anecdotes of comical outrage from an under sized angry alcoholic, or something, and packets of dry roasted peanuts, that I can’t eat, but thats another story.

Its a lot like driving through the Postman Pat set, are the roads of Cumbria, during the day. At night, in the rain, and stuck amidst the somewhat impatient arses that are the typical Cumbrian drivers, that have been waiting hours to collect their own child, it is something else entirely.

Not proud to report that I almost caused an accident where I approached a roundabout all wrong because I had forgotten it was there, thinking it was the main M6 junction roundabout, and not the little one just next to it. It is dangerous to drive by assumptions on a familiar road in the dark and wet, but so easily done. Scary, but luckily I drive over cautiously anyway.

We finally arrived home after midnight, where a beer was waiting for me. In the years that come, God willing, I will look back on this as a really lovely evening.

I took a Twitter break, years ago. See here.

But its time for another one, and for completely different reasons. Last time it was about feeding the algorithm, the lack of engagement, the politics, and that it simply took me away from my raison d’être. My writing.

This time, the reasons are a little bit more insidious.

Everyone I speak to will say something like “where does all the time go?” Or “How on earth is it July already?”

Time doesn’t feel right, and it doesn’t just feel not right for me. It feels not right for everyone, or mostly everyone, or just everyone that has talked about it. Either way, its not just me.

For a long time I simply assumed it was an age thing. Or maybe I was drinking too much.

No. I did some research, and its social media. We spend hours on our devices, but when our brains make sense of this during our sleep, our dreams, the whole time that we are awake and interacting with our phones is classified by the brain as “nothing happened”.

And its not just time at home. A three hour commute spent on the phone didn’t happen. A holiday away, with the phone, didn’t happen. It really is insidious.

And then, we notice how everything is designed to keep your face attached to the screen. Continuous scrolling to keep us hooked, the likes and replies on our posts are witheld until they can be used to entice us back when our attention begins to flag. We are bribed back with a flurry of attention.

The politics have changed. There are no pile ons if you say the wrong thing anymore, but its easy to get embroiled in pointless arguments.

The thing at the moment is the Supergirl movie. I won’t be watching it, so why the hell am I being drawn in to arguments about it.

And climate change. The Sun comes out and everyone wants to argue about how terrible it is, while simultaneously booking the flight to the Mediterranean in search of that very sun.

And the whole blue button/red button thing. If you don’t know. Don’t go there.

There is no profit in social media for me. It doesn’t drive any sales, it doesn’t deliver any engagement revenue. It just eats my time.

So the question is. How do I feel about deleting my account?

I feel nothing. There’s a little bit of FOMO but there are no great debates to be preserved.

Sod it. It can go. And I can reclaim my time, and spend it on better things, and hopefully have something worth remembering at the end of the day. Maybe.

Update.

It is done. And it is liberating.

The account is deactivated and the app is uninstalled.

After posting this blog post, I returned to my account to find a good natured reply to a post about the lost opportunities to explore the buses of Sheffield in Dr Who, and an insulting response to my views of Supergirl.

I then, ofcourse, replied about the buses, and gave a brutal put down to the miscreant. Neither are productive use of my time, but both are enticing to see what happens next.

So its gone. Doesn’t matter. Don’t care.