- by Owen Morton
I have decided that the people who read this website (a sadly diminishing number, I suspect, considering almost every time they log on, the site hasn’t been updated for weeks) are extremely and inexplicably interested in my life. This is why I have chosen to, on regular intervals, fill my readership in on the exciting details of my miserable existence. This includes things like buying He-Man DVDs (can you wait till Monday when Volume 5 comes out? I can’t) and going on train journeys, the latter because writing about such events allows me a chance to rant about British Rail, something I enjoy probably too much.
You may remember my disastrous journey to and from Manchester back in October, made almost unbearable due to a couple of nutcases who couldn’t decide whether their friends were stupid or clever, or whether they wanted a bag of crisps or not. My most recent journey was not as deplorable as that one was, fortunately, but it was still enough to make me grind my teeth whenever I think about it.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present … the ten and a half hour trip from Nottingham to Haverfordwest!
(By the way, Haverfordwest is a recognised word in the Microsoft Word spellchecker! How cool is that?)
All right! I was going to Haverfordwest for a quick holiday in the middle of my busy schedule working at Nottingham Business Library, the best library in the world, especially since they decided to start paying me for holiday time. The journey from Nottingham to Haverfordwest is one that I have made before, albeit not very often, but I know that it will generally take about six hours (which is, admittedly, about as long as it would take to get to Kenya on a speedier vehicle, but hey). Six hours on a train with only me for company is not a prospect that anyone would relish, especially me, since it takes less than half an hour for me to get bored and strange things start happening in my head. I once spent almost an hour considering how odd the word ‘bark’ is, and wondering why whoever called it bark did so. So being faced with the possibility that I would have time to think about six words (six whole words!) did not really fill me with joy. But British Rail succeeded admirably in an attempt to distract me and keep me otherwise occupied.
(Oh, bugger. I’ve just misspelt ‘occupied’ and it didn’t show up on the spellchecker – thus leading me to suspect that the spellchecker is not actually in use on this copy of Microsoft Word, and leading hence ever closer to the inevitable conclusion that Haverfordwest is not, in fact, a word. I knew it seemed too good to be true.)
Anyway. I arrived at Nottingham station all ready for the joys of my journey. British Rail began the day in typical style, at the last instant changing the platform on which the train was arriving. When I arrived at that platform, they decided that the train was to be split in two. One half was to be my train to Cardiff, whereas the other would go to Grimsby or Narborough or some other equally unenticing place.
It was at this point that I made my first mistake. I glanced at the fellow standing next to me on the platform, and asked him whether this was the train to Cardiff. (Not that he had any better idea than I did, of course, but it seems to be a peculiarly British tradition that at a platform you have to ask people who don’t know which train it is, so that if they think the same as you, then you’ll both have a friend if you turn out to be wrong.) He answered that he believed it was, and when the doors opened, we found we were pretty much the only people who got on that carriage.
I found myself a table, for I wished to use my laptop to write my novel (coming soon, folks – watch out for it in a bookstore near you!). In the otherwise empty carriage, my brief acquaintance from the platform approached and enquired as to whether he might sit opposite me. I was rather reluctant, to tell truth, for I had no desire to spend God knows how long trading witticisms with this rather dull-witted fellow, but it wasn’t really my place to refuse, so I agreed, and he sat down.
He didn’t have a very loud voice, nor any variation in tone or pitch or anything that might make his speech even vaguely interesting. I wondered whether he was trying to put me to sleep by being so boring, so he could nick my laptop or something, but his voice wasn’t really soothing enough for that. In the course of an absolutely interminable conversation, I gathered that he was a rugby player who was going to join his club, and that this club was – horror of horrors – in Haverfordwest. He was clearly delighted by the revelation that I also was going to Haverfordwest, and in a peculiar fit of insanity beyond even his usual boundaries, he inquired what my dad’s name was, “because my dad might know him, you see.” As it turned out, when I replied – rather confusedly – that my dad’s name was Andrew Morton, he merely grunted that maybe his dad didn’t know mine after all. He then wanted to put his SIM card in my phone, offering no explanation, a request which I politely if forcefully refused, and I then turned my laptop on, put in the headphones and listened to some music nice and loudly, giving him the clear signal to bugger off and leave me in peace. Every so often, I cast a furtive glance over the top of my screen to see what he was doing, and each and every time, he was staring at me intently. I found this somewhat unnerving, especially when on one of the occasions, I noticed he was talking, and appeared to have been doing so for some while.
Finally, the great hulking brute fell asleep, sprawled over the two seats on the other side of my table. I considered evacuating to another carriage, but decided the bastard would probably come and hunt me down and talk to me some more, so I didn’t.
At this point, the train lurched to an unscheduled, unexpected and entirely unwelcome stop somewhere between Birmingham and Gloucester. And there it remained for about an hour and a half. Every so often the friendly train driver announced that we were still delayed, oddly enough considering we weren’t moving, and explained that it was due to a broken set of points. I began to fume. I was coming to realise that I could well be stuck with the demented rugby player for several hours longer than I had already resigned myself to, a prospect that did not really sit well with me.
After about three quarters of a century, the train finally began to move again, but British Rail had a fresh array of surprises for me when they decided to terminate the train at Gloucester rather than at the agreed Cardiff Central. The next train to Cardiff was in half an hour. British Rail had laid on a bus to Cardiff for us, but I thought that that would take more time than just waiting half an hour for the next train. In addition to this, I needed to buy some phone credit, and I had the sneaking suspicion that if I got on a coach, a certain rugby player might well sit next to me, something that I had no intention of allowing to happen. Consequently, I seized the opportunity to ditch the rugby player, by slipping into the shop as we passed, and staying there long enough to miss the bus. I saw his saddened face, peering out of the window at me, as he was driven away to a long and friendless life in Haverfordwest.
I bought my phone credit in a One-Stop Shop from an indescribably surly woman, then returned to the station in plenty of time to catch the train. I noticed en route that the train went through Newport (Gwent) on its way to Cardiff, and furthermore, I knew that trains direct to Haverfordwest frequently passed through Newport. I asked the ticket inspector whether it would be best to get off at Newport or Cardiff to go to Haverfordwest.
“Doesn’t matter, mate, it’s the same train, goes straight through,” was his cheerful if entirely erroneous reply.
It was at this stage that I made my second mistake. I decided that I would get off at Newport. Oddly enough – and I’m sure you can all see what’s about to happen here – there was no train from Newport to Haverfordwest, at any time that day. Fuming with rage, and considering whether the ticket inspector had exacted this injustice on me as some bizarre form of revenge for the English suppression of the Welsh all those centuries ago, I boarded the next train to Cardiff.
I got off the train at Cardiff just in time to see the Haverfordwest train hightailing it out of the station. Growling with impotent fury, I went along to see a station official, of which there are next to none at the massive station that is Cardiff. The only one I could find was one standing at the entrance to the platforms, checking everybody’s tickets as they entered and exited. I asked him when the next train to Haverfordwest was, learned with some dismay that it was not for another hour and forty minutes, and was advised by the guard to have a look round Cardiff. This I did and I can report that it is quite a nice town, its Forbidden Planet store being adequately stocked with He-Man figures. (Snake-Men figures, no less!)
On the way back into the station, I met the man who had checked my ticket as I left and who had had a long and involved conversation with me about getting out of Cardiff into Haverfordwest as soon as humanly possible. He greeted me as though he had never seen me before and officiously demanded to see my ticket. I pointed out that he had already seen it and me far too much that day, but he wasn’t having any of it. By the time I got onto the Haverfordwest train, I was mightily cross, I’m afraid to say. Welshmen seemed to be going out of their way to make my life difficult.
Fortunately for my temper but unfortunately for a climactic end to this story, I reached Haverfordwest without further incident, my journey taking a mere ten and a half hours as opposed to the advertised six. But hey, four and a half hours extra aggravation, and far too much contact with rugby playing lunatics, who’s counting? Well, I was, if no one else.
Sadly, I can’t think of a punchline for this story, so I’m going to have to leave it there.