What is it with me and public transport? There always has to be some kind of incident. I was heading to Nottingham on an early train from Three Bridges, so being of sound mind I’d booked a taxi the night before to pick me up at half six. Plenty of time to get to the station, get a paper and a drink and stroll up to the platform. 6.44 the taxi turned up. The taxi driver telling me he’d been back home trying to find his coin box. Sod the fact I had a train to catch.
Then he turns into a lunatic version of Lewis Hamilton, rules of the road be damned. Red lights – don’t worry about them. Right side of the road – no one minds. Cutting up other road users – ahh, fuck ‘em. Home to Three Bridges station in under four minutes. I think the driver had been taking lessons from the film “Taxi”. Obviously the original French version and not the shitty remake with Queen Latifah in the lead role.
I know it was a Saturday morning, but surely that’s no reason for nothing at the station to be open. No paper and no drink, and then at the barriers absolutely no hope of an advance ticket working. God damn Southern Trains’ stupid barriers don’t accept advance tickets. “Seek Assistance” the display tells me. I don’t need assistance you crock of shit, I just need you to work and let me through the barrier with my valid ticket. Every other train company’s barriers can make it work; it’s just Southern Trains who are supremely incompetent fucks.
Then after all that drama the damn Thamestink train is late, so there was no need for the mad rush. Yet this lateness was causing me potential other issues. There wasn’t a large changeover window at St Pancras, so if it got any further behind schedule I’d miss my train there.
For some reason at St Pancras they make you go halfway to the hotel before there is a way up to the upper level to get to the East Midlands trains barriers. They make you walk past a pair of down escalators before you get to a pair of up ones. Why each set can’t have one of each is beyond most human comprehension.
There was a WH Smith’s open and I had a couple of minutes to dive in and get drinks and a paper. My entrance coincided with some old bloke having a monumental breakdown about how shit their self-service machines were and how he didn’t want to use one in the first place, why didn’t they just put staff on the normal tills as all he wanted was to buy a paper. Two staff appeared, one at a normal till, so whilst the angry old man was extricating himself from the self-service till I jumped in and paid for my stuff so I could catch my train.
Which was late leaving. Their reservation system was up the spout as well, so it was a free for all on the seats, which was taken well by most people with reservations, as long as they got a seat in the right coach they were happy. Apart from the monumentally rude woman who got on at Leicester who shouted at the couple to get out of her seats, despite the fact that two seats exactly the same were vacant behind the two she was getting irate about.
I was a few minutes late into Nottingham, but I could deal with that, I had some spare time. This was a good thing as the population of Nottingham seem to have somewhat of a death wish, as they all just walk in front of the trams without checking. I don’t know how the tram driver’s heart rate was doing, but mine was off and running and I wasn’t driving.
Later on in Leicester it was the return of mad taxi drivers. The one I got from the station brightly told me it was going to be busy as the City game hadn’t long finished. And then he proceeded to drive straight into the mass of humanity coming from the game. There were four separate occasions where he could have taken a different, less congested and more direct route. By the time he pulled up he had the raging hump because I kept telling him what I thought of his route choices. Although to be fair he did knock a couple of quid off the fair, obviously having thought he was picking someone up from the station that had no idea of how Leicester’s one way systems worked.
Much later on that night, getting across Leicester to the Fan Club saw another piss taking route by a taxi driver. He got the benefit of my wisdom and no tip either.
Coming home was supposed to be a nice easy journey. A booked seat and the single change at St Pancras. Jeez, I really shouldn’t be so fucking naïve. The booked train was cancelled, so everyone due to travel on that was crammed onto the next train. Reservations were out of the window again, and the train travelled with two of the five carriages virtually empty, and the other three like sardine tins. They refused to declassify first class to make up for the missing train, something even Southern Trains could manage.
It was so bad I jumped ship at Bedford after an hour of standing and headed for the relative normality of a Thamestink train, and you all know how much I hate those bastards.
I ended up getting home at the same time I would have done if my original train had run as well. Thanks for small mercies.
Roll on a week of private car travel.