Today was a case in point, although it has to be said that there were other annoyances today as well. On Monday I get up at the crack of dawn – serious crack of dawn stuff, still dark outside and last Monday with frost everywhere to boot – and drive to my daughter’s house. There I hand the car over so that she can drive away for a day at university while I get the small people up and organised for school. The car is left at my house on Sunday evening so that we can do this as there is no public transport at that time of day. After I have dropped the small people off at school, sometimes involving a game of tig in the playground before they go in, I stroll along to Stalybridge railway station, about 25 minutes walk, and catch the train home.
This morning it was fairly grey but not raining as I walked to the railway station: although a little chilly, not unpleasant. By the time I reached the railway station it was starting to drizzle. It was at this point that the day started to go a little pear-shaped.
First of all, the train I planned to catch had been cancelled. No problem, thought I. I would just catch the next train in the opposite direction, get off at Ashton Under Lyne and pop into IKEA before catching a bus home. According to the station electronic display, that train should leave from platform 5.
Now, the Stalybridge station I have known for some time has always had only two platforms, the usual sort of arrangement with one platform on either side of the tracks. So where had platform 5 appeared from? There has been some re-vamping of the station and there are now sidings which are pretending to be platforms. What used to be platform 1 now comprises platforms 1, 2 and 3 while the former platform 2 is now platforms 4 and 5, depending on where you stand. Anyway, I found platform 5 ... eventually.
The due time for the train’s departure approached but the train did not. Several other prospective passengers and I enquired about this and were told that we would be better heading for platform 3 (formerly known as platform 1) to catch a delayed Huddersfield to Manchester train. Just as we were about to trudge through the tunnel to do this, a train pulled in to platform 5. We were pleased, briefly. A host of angry people got off the train; they were supposed to be going to Huddersfield but had just been told that the train was terminating its journey at Stalybridge. We asked the driver. He had no idea; until a few minutes earlier he had thought he was going to Huddersfield. So we went through the tunnel and eventually caught a train.
Apparently all this chaos was caused by signal failure somewhere on the way to Huddersfield, resulting in trains being delayed, cancelled, restarted and generally mixed up. Trains were in the wrong places. It was beginning to be like one of those children’s games you used to get with a load of letters in a square frame to push around until they made words. Somehow they had to get the trains to the right places to get the schedule back on track. Very frustrating for the travelling public. I was very glad not to be commuting to work or heading for an important meeting. I kept overhearing mobile phone conversations along the lines of, “Well, my train’s been cancelled. I won’t make it to the meeting on time. Expect me when you see me.”
Mind you, from the travel news I had heard on the radio earlier, it was no better on the roads in the Greater Manchester area!
Then I walked through the drizzle to IKEA with the idea that I was going to buy some more of a certain fabric I had found there to make cushion covers for chairs in my kitchen. I knew exactly what I was looking for but the textiles department appeared to have disappeared. That too is being re-vamped and will be re-established, bigger and better, in a week or so. How very frustrating! What’s more, the drizzle was now turning into rain!
So I picked up some essential supplies from a nearby supermarket and headed for home, rather later than planned and less than pleased with my morning!
Not all days are grey, however. On Saturday I went into Manchester with our eldest granddaughter and found the city centre crisp and bright, looking its best. We were heading for the Whitworth Art Gallery to look at some pictures. We saw some Hogarth and some Hockney, the latter echoing the former’s Rake’s Progress with a series of drawings from his early days in New York. Most interesting!
What we really wanted to do, though, was take a photo of the view from the huge picture window on the ground floor which framed the trees in the Whitworth Park beautifully. However, there were “No Photographs” notices all over the place. And then, by the time we came out the sun had either moved or gone behind a cloud and the park looked much more ordinary and less photogenic. So we headed homewards.
And Saturday’s travel turned into a kind of pre-cursor of today’s problems. We waited for our train, watched it pull in to stop at the platform and then saw the announcement change from “On Time” to “Cancelled”. We were not the only ones to give voice to cries of “What?” and “You can’t just cancel a train, just like that!!!!” A station employee explained to us that the driver was perfectly prepared to take the train out but they had no guard. In a time of high unemployment they can’t find people willing to work as guards on trains! Unbelievable!
We discovered a train going part way to our destination, to Ashton Under Lyne in fact, from where we could catch a bus. So off we trotted, out through the barrier, in through another, up some stairs and over a bridge. And then came the announcement that the previously cancelled train was now running and ready to depart. So back over the bridge, down the stairs, out of one barrier and in through another we went. And we sat in the train for ten minutes before it finally departed! And it was so crowded that we never saw the guard!
It’s exhausting getting around by train!
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