Local travel fun and games!

Yesterday was swallowed up by my being busy. I was up bright and early to go off the the hairdresser’s in Manchester. Yes, I know I could go somewhere local and pay less but I like my Manchester hairdresser’s. There I caught up on the gossip magazines, most of which were a little out of date and so I did not have to plough through stuff about Prince Andrew.

The royal family came into it though, as there was an interview with Helena Bonham-Carter, currently playing Princess Margaret in the TV series The Crown. By all accounts she does it rather well. She had met the princess in her youth. I suppose her name is a bit of a give-away, suggesting that her family might have mixed in highfalutin circles. As well as reading biographies of the apparently rebellious princess, Ms Bonham-Carter said she consulted a spiritualist who put her in touch with the dead princess. It seems her dead royal highness thoroughly approved of Helena playing her in the series. You could not make it up!

My hair sorted and my gossip-reading (about lots of folk I have never heard of - I am seriously out of touch!) completed, I went off to do a bit of half-hearted Christmas shopping and then on to my Italian conversation class. There we did what adult classes always do in the last class before Christmas; we had a bit of a Christmas party. And, as this was an Italian class we had to drink Prosecco and eat panettone. And, quite exceptionally, we had arancini, cooked by one of the men in our group. He explained that he had been to an adult-ed cookery class which began with simple stuff like shepherd’s pie but moved on eventually into more exotic foreign dishes. Hence the arancini, which were declared to be very authentic by our resident Italian! Very good they were too!

My Italian class finishes at 6.30. From Manchester Piccadilly station I can catch a tram to Manchester Victoria station, where I catch another tram to Oldham, usually arriving just in time to miss the bus to Delph. So I have taken to waiting at Piccadilly for the Huddersfield train which stops at Greenfield, arriving there about five minutes before the shuttle bus, a minibus which follows a scenic route around the Saddleworth village but which is designed to coincide with the trains from Manchester. 

The train left Manchester on time and then stopped and waited, just outside the station, for several minutes. When it set off again, it crawled along at snail’s pace. The public address system kept reminding us that this was the Transpennine Express. Really? Never was there such a misnomer! The computer display on the train informed us that the train had been delayed by 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 8 minutes and kept recalculating the time at which it was expected to arrive at various stations along the route. Finally it was due in Greenfield at the same time as my shuttle bus! Ouch! I did not relish running over a possibly icy bridge.

There was no sign of the little bus so a few other people and I compared notes and agreed to cross our fingers. After all, I was able to advise them, the bus had arrived late every week for the last three weeks. One couple gave up in despair after five minutes and hopped in a taxi. As their taxi set off, the little bus came round the corner. Hurray! I had a pleasant chat with the friendly driver, a young man from Hull, or ‘Ull as he says in his broad Yorkshire. I have chatted with him on more than one occasion. There is nothing quite like a minibus with a friendly driver.

Today I got up and ran to the market in Uppermill, today being Wednesday. My timing was fine and I was at the bus-stop in the square in time to make my way home in the same shuttle bus. Which went sailing by! It was held up at traffic lights, where I caught up with it and knocked hopefully on the door. The driver (not the young man from ‘Ull but a lady driver) indicated, as I expected, that she could not open the door and that the stop in the square was out of action.

I was rather annoyed as there was no sign that I could see to inform me of that decision, presumably because of the road works traffic lights. But I picked up my shopping and walked to the next stop, probably half a mile up the road. When the next bus (not the shuttle bus) came along I had a little moan to the driver. He said he was unaware of the stop being closed!

Grrrr!