There we saw the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition at the Tate Britain, once again flaunting our old-fogey status to get a reduction. The exhibition remains open until mid-January and is well worth seeing. Lots of pictures, lots of information – we enjoyed it. And then in the middle of it we spotted a picture called “The Children’s Holiday” by William Holman Hunt, a paining which purported to show an idyll of middle-class domesticity. Idyll or not, what surprised us was that the lady surrounded by charming children was the spit and image of Edwina Currie, politician, MP, novelist, broadcaster. The likeness was quite uncanny.
Having had our dose of culture for the day we went on to Baker Street where Phil visited a chess bookshop – he does this every time we go to Baker Street – while I ranted about internet access in cafes in the UK. See my last post.
And then on Tuesday we once more used our oyster cards to go to central London, this time to catch a train to Manchester. Thereby hangs a tale.
Today’s news has included an item about the West Coast rail franchise, currently held by Virgin but recently awarded to another company. There is some controversy about the awarding of the franchise and the selection methods used so for the time being it remains with Virgin. Which brings me to my railway story which in turn makes me wonder if Virgin should run that railway line.
We had booked tickets online for one of Virgin’s trains from London to Manchester. A nice bargain price we got too but that’s not the point of this tale. We got on the train without mishap, despite carrying huge paper cups of coffee. (This time the coffee came from Délice de France, something of a misnomer I think. When I pointed out that in France they would never serve you half a gallon of coffee, the young lady at the counter sighed and told me that this is England and people expect large cups of coffee. I want to question that assumption; my feeling is that the demand has been imported from the USA, along with a cafe chain I have ranted about before. Surely there are others as well as me who want a normal sized cup of coffee. Time to introduce the “extra small” cup. The croissant and pain au chocolat from Délice de France were fine, by the way.)
All appeared to go well on our journey. We drank our coffee. We read the paper. I completed the sudoko puzzle. We snoozed. And then the train manager made an announcement. Our train was going to terminate its journey at Crewe because of a problem with another train. At Crewe we would be able to transfer to another train to Manchester. We should be sure to take all our belongings with us.
In due course, we arrived at Crewe and were directed to leave the train. Which we all obediently did: a very large number of people milling about on the platform at Crewe. Then everything went vaguely pear-shaped. There seemed to be contradictory announcements about which platform to go to in order to catch the train to Manchester. Everyone was concerned that the train might leave before we got to the correct platform. None of the announcements mentioned passengers from a Virgin train. Something like chaos was developing.
Eventually most of us made our way to platform 5 where there was indeed a train heading for Manchester. This was clearly not a Virgin Pendolino however so I asked the driver if it was all right to get on his train with Virgin tickets. Our printed tickets had said quite specifically that they were for the train we had caught in London and for THAT TRAIN ONLY. The driver seemed to think it was fine so we, and a whole host of Virgin refugees, got on.
The train set off and after a while someone came to check tickets, a uniformed lady. When the first of our group showed a Virgin ticket she told him he would have to leave the train at the next station. He was not accepting this and remonstrated with Uniformed Lady. Not only this but half the carriage sat up and took notice. Safety in numbers was clearly the order of the day. Uniformed Lady harrumphed at each ex-Virgin-customer and went on her way.
She soon came back though and as the train pulled into Wilmslow she told the first gentleman she had harangued that he had to get all the Virgin passengers off the train NOW. He was just a passenger, with no official position, so he took little notice and merely organised himself. The message filtered through, however, and most people left the train. Some started to leave and then thought better of it. The train was delayed in the station for about ten minutes while this fuss went on.
In the meantime, we had located the Wilmslow station manager and explained the situation. She was surprised and more than a little cross. Uniformed Lady’s train was blocking her platform. No other train could get in while it was there. And besides, she couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Uniformed Lady should have justletus all travel.
We had a further discussion and found out that there was in fact a Virgin train due in about twenty minutes. It didn’t normally stop at Wilmslow but would make a special unscheduled stop this time. However, it was going via Manchester airport and would take a while getting to Manchester Piccadilly. As a result most of us caught the next ordinary train going to Manchester, not a Virgin train but the Wilmslow station manager sorted it out so that we could all get on without problems.
On arriving in Manchester, some thirty minutes later than originally planned, we went in search of the Virgin information desk and collected a complaints form. I am sure that the original problem was beyond Virgin’s control but their handling of the problem left a lot to be desired.
At the Virgin desk we came across a couple, travellers from our original train, who were trying to claim back from Virgin the money that they had been charged for a ticket on a train from a different company. Somehow they had been the only Virgin- escapees on that train and had given in to the pressure. At least we did not have to spend any extra money!!
And finally, this morning I set off on my normal back-in-Delph jogging route. When we came home from Spain at the end of August I had found one entrance to this route blocked off with a new fence but had found a way round that problem. Today I found another fence at the other end of that section of my route and had to climb up a bank to get round that. Now, this is a patch of land that people around here have walked across for about 35 years. The workmen reinforcing the fence as I returned from my run just told me grumpily that it was private land and didn’t seem to feel the need to explain anything more.
Time for another bit of complaining I think!
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