People watching!

Well, today we’re off on our travels for the first time in ages, off to visit the southern branch of the family. Before we could do train travel again we needed to renew our senior rail cards. The last time we paid the money for three years of reduced travel for being old biddies, we never got to use them. Maybe this time we’ll be better organised. 

Then there was the travel to Manchester Piccadilly to catch the train. According to various websites and journey there is no direct Metrolink tram service between Manchester Victoria and Manchester Piccadilly! Ridiculous! The two major stations are not directly connected. So we stayed on our tram to St Peter’s Square and walked from there, having just not made the connecting tram from that stop. It’s not a long walk. I have often walked from Victoria to Piccadilly, also not too long a walk. 

Oddly, as the tram approached Victoria the public address system informed us: “We are approaching Victoria, where you can catch trams to Bury, Market Street and Piccadilly. Yes! Piccadilly! Maybe it was an old announcement, for ai am sure there used to be a tram connection. I’ve certainly done that journey in the opposite direction, although not for a while. The days when I regularly travelled into and out of Manchester came to a halt quite some time ago, probably with lockdown. 

Travelling is a chance for people watching. 

On the tram into Manchester I earwigged on a conversation between a mother and daughter on the seats in front of ours. I suppose the mother might have been in her forties … she made some reference to he father being 65 … but she reminisced about summers and winters of her youth as if she was a much older person. This summer, she remarked has been a washout. She remembered how every summer was red hot all through the long summer holidays from school. In fact, the hot and sunny weather began at Easter. Really? The only one I really recall as being like that was 1976 when the sun came out in the last couple of weeks of June and stayed out until September. 

Then there were the winters, with snow about three feet deep, whereas now we have a mere sprinkling. That’s global warming for you, she declared. I’ll grant that we did have snowier winters. We were snowed into our house in the late 1970s but was that nostalgia-ridden lady old enough to remember that. Maybe she could recall 1986 when it snowed on New Year’s Day, the day we moved house, and snow lay on the ground for a good six or seven weeks! 

Then there was the young lady busily typing messages on her phone … with nails that extended a good half inch beyond her finger ends! How do you manage to fasten buttons and zips with finger nails of that kind?

On the train, by which time it was lunchtime, someone must have opened up an egg and who-knows-what sandwich. A distinctly eggy smell filled the carriage for a while. We were in a “quiet coach”, phones on silent. Can they arrange aroma-free carriages too? 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!